But the rebellious playfulness of the viral-video-inspired moment, and the song, written into the pilot script by executive producer-writers Diggs and Casal, isn’t just hyperlocal.
But East Bay-born collaborators Diggs and Casal, with their shared backgrounds in music, theater and spoken word, see the Bay Area as a place where lyricism and metaphor are baked into the textures of their everyday world.
“It worked so well, but it worked so well because we incarcerate more people than anywhere in the world,” Diggs said of the dancers, first introduced in prison blues.
In this, “Blindspotting” leans into the heightened flourishes of the film, directed by Carlos López Estrada and starring Diggs and Casal.
“What was really important to me, Diggs and Rafael was to show this love between Miles and Ashley and show how strong that is, and how they’ll do anything to keep their family together.
Greenlighted during the pandemic and developed by a writers room in Vancouver, where Diggs was filming his TNT sci-fi series “Snowpiercer,” “Blindspotting” was written by Diggs, Casal and screenwriters Priscila García-Jacquier, Alanna Brown, “Jinn” filmmaker Nijla Mu’min and Benjamin Earl Turner, who makes his acting debut on the show.
“There’s a lot of our moms in there, most importantly the either inability or unwillingness to not state her opinion even when she knows it’s not going to go over well.
stages before heading north in its final weeks to film exteriors on location, hoping to capture Oakland‘s unmistakable essence.
Which is how Brooklyn-raised Cephas Jones found herself in Oakland last year dancing to Mac Dre, for a scene so infectious the crew joined in bouncing along to the late rapper’s iconic Bay Area anthem.
Having spent nearly a decade writing the film, which launched their respective acting careers, Diggs and Casal considered Collin and Miles’ stories told.
Turning “Blindspotting” into a series wasn’t a notion the filmmakers had considered until Lionsgate, which acquired the film out of the Sundance Film Festival, pitched the idea.
Should they get a second season, Casal and Diggs hope to bring more characters and communities into the “Blindspotting” world, bring production to the East Bay and build infrastructure in the area that might help others tell their own Bay Area stories.
“Maybe that’s our Bay Area upbringing, but I do think it’s our responsibility to try to have an impact on the systems and institutions that we have to work with in order to make the show,” Casal concluded.