“We know that we can’t speak to everybody’s experience, but we can speak to Kat’s experience,” said The Bold Type showrunner Amanda Lasher. (Warning: Spoilers for the episode.)
Don’t know if anyone posted this yet. I’ll admit I was a little wary we were getting a new showrunner but after reading this, I’m looking forward to Kat’s development.
Some choice quotes:
“I wondered what it’s like for Kat as a character to have two white best friends and to live in this [media] world,” Lasher said. “I wanted to hear her point of view, and for her to talk about her racial identity, since obviously it’s a part of who she is.”
“We know that we can’t speak to everybody’s experience, but we can speak to Kat’s experience,” Lasher said. “We tried to be as specific as possible to what Kat was going through, and where she came from, and what her parents were like, and how that shaped her, so that we could understand why she made some of the choices she made in Season 1.”
“There are all these conversations going on about race, and the way we teach our children about race, and the way we raise our kids,” Lasher said. “And there’s this sort of idea of raising your kids as color blind, which in the white community has been very present as a philosophy for raising your kids. And it’s well-intentioned, but I think it’s actually misguided, and this felt like an opportunity to explore that idea and how it’s not always beneficial.”
“I think it’s a really big step for Kat,” Lasher said, noting that this is only the beginning of the show’s exploration of Kat and her relationship to her blackness. “We continue the storyline, and the privilege of where Kat’s coming from, and also white privilege,” Lasher said of what’s to come. “It definitely comes up again in the season, and we tried to find a balance of how much, and where, and how it shifts her point of view about things.”
