{"id":832795,"date":"2026-07-29T03:16:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T03:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/832795\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T03:16:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T03:16:14","slug":"lena-waithe-says-goodbye-to-the-chi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/832795\/","title":{"rendered":"Lena Waithe Says Goodbye to \u2018The Chi\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

This interview contains spoilers for the series finale of \u201cThe Chi.\u201d<\/p>\n

From its beginning in 2018, \u201cThe Chi,\u201d created by Lena Waithe, sought to defy expectations about criminality and Chicago and focus on the kinds of families that are rarely seen in a TV drama.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile it unfolds from a crime, it\u2019s not really a crime story,\u201d the New York Times television critic James Poniewozik wrote in his review<\/a> of its first season. \u201cIt\u2019s about a widening pool of people who would rather be doing anything besides dealing with the repercussions of a murder.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the series continued to challenge convention, it became a hit for Showtime and the streaming platform Paramount+, the rare show whose viewership increased<\/a> over time. \u201cThe Chi\u201d concluded on Friday after eight seasons, making it the longest-running Black drama on cable television.<\/p>\n

Its success did not come without controversy, however. Jason Mitchell, who played Brandon Johnson, a talented chef grieving and seeking revenge for his brother\u2019s murder, was originally the show\u2019s lead. But in 2019, after the second season, Mitchell was fired from the show and his character killed off because of sexual misconduct accusations<\/a> made against him by his co-star Tiffany Boone and by Ayanna Floyd Davis, then the showrunner. Mitchell has denied<\/a> the allegations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chi\u201d reset after Mitchell\u2019s departure with a new showrunner, Justin Hillian, centering on the teenage Kevin Williams (Alex R. Hibbert) while expanding its focus on his friends and family. It kept amping up the violence and melodrama but also featured some of the most textured depictions of queer marriage, transgender characters, working-class families and formerly incarcerated men on TV.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chi\u201d ended with triumph and tenderness. Bakari Bronson (Ahmad Ferguson), a young Black man torn between the criminal activity of street life and his literary aspirations, survives a shootout and pursues his creative dreams. Two of the show\u2019s most beloved characters \u2014 the entrepreneurial Emmett Washington (Jacob Latimore) and the patient, progressive Kiesha Williams (Birgundi Baker) \u2014 get married. The couple broke gender norms by proposing to each other at the same time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got to see them unlearn what they\u2019ve been taught about what love is,\u201d Baker said by phone. \u201cI think trauma easily trickles down, and we saw that in Emmett\u2019s relationship with his father and Kiesha\u2019s relationship with her mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waithe, who grew up in and around Chicago, first gained attention as an Emmy-winning writer and star of the Netflix comedy \u201cMaster of None.\u201d She went on to create the series \u201cBoomerang<\/a>\u201d and \u201cTwenties\u201d and write the movie \u201cQueen & Slim.\u201d In an hourlong interview in last month and in a later phone call, she reflected on the evolution of \u201cThe Chi,\u201d her relationship to the fans and what she sought to achieve with the show\u2019s conclusion. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.<\/p>\n

What was your original vision for the show?<\/p>\n

I was coming off the show \u201cDear White People\u201d \u2014 I had a chance to work with Justin Simien, who is into multi-protagonist stories. I was fascinated by that because the more people you have in the frame, the more opinions and voices you have. That is the way I want to write. Coming up on Aaron Sorkin, or \u201cA Different World,\u201d \u201cSchool Daze,\u201d \u201cBoyz N The Hood\u201d or \u201cMenace to Society\u201d \u2014 these are shows with many characters coming from different perspectives. All those things influenced \u201cThe Chi,\u201d where you\u2019d have one person who\u2019s from the street, another person who wants to just do the right thing. You have a woman who is more promiscuous, a woman who\u2019s more buttoned up. It was always supposed to be an ensemble piece.<\/p>\n

Did you feel pressure for it to be something else?<\/p>\n

There was this desire to compare it to \u201cThe Wire.\u201d There\u2019s no greater compliment, but I\u2019m not that interested in the system. I\u2019m more interested in the people that have to deal with the system and what kind of impact it has on their lives. And because Jason Mitchell was a known commodity coming off \u201cStraight Outta Compton,\u201d it made sense to place him in the center. By the time we got to Season 3, I fought for Justin Hillian, who started on the show as a story editor in the first season, to be the showrunner. Justin was able to say to me, \u201cOK, you want to get rid of the cop stories, you want to focus on the community, and you want it to be an ensemble piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mitchell left after Season 2, and in past interviews<\/a> about the allegations, you\u2019ve said you wish you had done things differently. What do you wish you would have done differently?<\/p>\n

I think what I did was the right thing. I wasn\u2019t on set; I wasn\u2019t in Chicago. All I could do is allow H.R. to handle it, and they handled things in the way they felt was appropriate. What I\u2019m proud of is that myself, the producing directors, the showrunners \u2014 we wanted to make sure something like that never would occur again on our set. And the truth is it never did.<\/p>\n

As \u201cThe Chi\u201d evolved into more of an ensemble show, how did that influence the storytelling?<\/p>\n

I wanted to focus on different kinds of Black men in Chicago, young and old, and show different perspectives on the violence around them. But these men have women in their lives, whether it be a mother, a girlfriend, a grandmother, a friend, a sister. So over the course of the series, and once we lost a main male character, we were able to shift to women. Particularly in Season 3, when the character Kiesha was abducted, people had to ask, \u201cWhat happens when a Black woman goes missing?\u201d The community has to find her, not the police, because we are the ones who care.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to say, \u201cOh, now the men have to take the back seat.\u201d But rather: We have a voice, and there are things that are going on with us as well. Also being a person who is queer, I have a different idea of what family is.<\/p>\n

You also show blended families as normal. Emmett is a good father, even though he has four children with four different women.<\/p>\n

Our community can be a little conservative, old-fashioned and steeped in religious ideology. With some of these family dynamics, I\u2019m trying to humanize it. Maybe older generations would say, \u201cWhat is this, the Ghetto Brady Bunch?\u201d But these younger characters snap back and say: \u201cWell, Granddad had other kids across town. We just had to act like it wasn\u2019t the truth until the funeral came.\u201d I don\u2019t have a desire to hide or have shame around it.<\/p>\n

You have a pretty active fan base. How has your audience grown with you over the life of the show?<\/p>\n

I watch [YouTube] recaps like \u201cThe Weekend Watch,\u201d \u201cThe Spot Real Talk\u201d and \u201cMarcDarkTV,\u201d and I love watching the straightest Black dudes on the planet talk about Trig [Luke James] and Fatima [L\u2019lerr\u00e9t Jazelle], this young woman he\u2019s dating who is trans, and how they\u2019re making it work. And based on what they say or how they communicate or how they grow, I\u2019ll send them a T-shirt or a beanie or shoot them a message: \u201cI\u2019m hearing you because I need to hear from you. I want to hear how this is sitting with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

What was your hope for the end of \u201cThe Chi\u201d?<\/p>\n

This is my first time ending a show. And because of the movie \u201cQueen & Slim,\u201d I have a reputation for not shying away from tragic endings. Bakari feels like your son or the kid next door and is representative of a lot of young Black men who are debating, \u201cDo I make fast money or do I make legal money?\u201d Ahmad Ferguson has charm, even though his character has taken somebody out and killed them. Everybody\u2019s Team Bakari, so the fact that he was shot and got to survive is something I want people to take away from the show. It is important to me that every ending is a new beginning. It\u2019s never really the end; it\u2019s just the start of something new.<\/p>\n

A lot of my favorite shows, particularly Black shows, went out with a whimper, be it \u201cA Different World\u201d or \u201cLiving Single.\u201d These shows shaped me as a writer and as a person, and I didn\u2019t want my show to have that same fate. I\u2019m grateful that we\u2019re going out when people still care. And to have people like Susan Fales-Hill and Debbie Allen [producers of \u201cA Different World\u201d], Yvette Lee Bowser [\u201cLiving Single\u201d] and Mara Brock Akil [\u201cGirlfriends\u201d] as mentors in my community and helping to raise me, this ending is also for them. It\u2019s for all of us.<\/p>\n

Cinematography by Jensen Gore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This interview contains spoilers for the series finale of \u201cThe Chi.\u201d From its beginning in 2018, \u201cThe Chi,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":832796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75,290741,19702,1788,290742,290740],"class_list":["post-832795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-lena","tag-showtime","tag-television","tag-the-chi-tv-program","tag-waithe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}