Photo Credit: Kyle Christy/NetflixEmmy-Award winning writer Larry Wilmore has teamed up with actor Will Smith for the six-part Netflix series Amend: The Fight for America, an in-depth conversation about the 14th Amendment.
Wilmore, who serves as a co-executive producer, says exploring the life-changing Amendment — which granted citizenship and protection to formerly enslaved African Americans — was a subject that he wanted to elicit an response.
“If something is triggered and you’re feeling some emotions that are raw out of this, then I’m doing my job,” Wilmore tells ABC Audio. “If you’re not feeling something then I’m not doing my job. And the point is not to produce that, but to really tell the story and be honest about it and straightforward.”
The series, which includes speeches and writings from historic figures such as Frederick Douglass, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, also shares the ongoing challenges that African Americans face when it comes to equality. Wilmore says his hope in bringing the series to life was to not only educate people about their troubled history, but to shed light on both the good and the bad.
“You can’t tell the story and people go ‘Nah, I don’t want to hear that,” he says. “So part of the challenge is, ‘How do you tell the story and engage people and bring them in?'”
“So we got to talk about this,” he continues. “There’s a lot of light here, but there’s a lot of dark, too. And we’re going to talk about them both.”
Amend: The Fight for America, also featuring Mahershala Ali, Samuel L. Jackson, and Pedro Pascal, is now available on Netflix.
By Candice Williams
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
