I'll say this. I wrote the Thanksgiving episode with Lena [Waithe, Aziz's co-star in the episode]. And I wouldn't have done it if Lena either didn't write it with me or sit down with me for a long, long time and let me write it. If you're only writing about yourself, that's limiting as a storyteller, but if you're gonna go into other people's worlds, you'd better get it right. If a white dude wrote the episode “Indians on TV,” I don't think they would have written it in that way; they would have gotten it wrong. And it's a little offensive for them to be like, Well, this is what I think that experience is. You know what I mean?

Your character comes to New York, and she really loves the drugstore Duane Reade, which I thought was so funny. Do you remember your first Duane Reade experience? I know this sounds stupid, but that was actually something that happened to me. One day I was talking to Aziz, and I said that the first time that I arrived in New York, I went to Duane Reade and I went crazy. I have never seen something like this before in my life. He was so shocked that he put it in the script [laughs]. I feel a little bit embarrassed. Many of the things that happen in the show, they’re real. This is Aziz. He puts all your life into a script.

In Waithe’s mind, minority writers have a responsibility to share their stories. “In this world, we’re often silenced,” she says. “Particularly as a black woman, you’re told to shut up and sit down. We’ve been silenced for hundreds of years. No more.” She found the collaboration process especially empowering. “It was Netflix, Aziz, and Melina, and they were all like, ‘No, bitch. Say what you gotta say. This is your moment. This is your story. We’re not gonna compromise it.’ That was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.”