From LGBTQ Rights to Lizzo’s Dancers, Nneka Onuorah Seeks to Represent the Under-Represented

Lizzo is such a staunch advocate for representation, but what was it about the series that made you want to be involved in it?

Anytime there are nuanced stories that need a commercial platform – and we can tell them in an entertaining and compelling way, and it means something to people and it moves people, and it speaks to a bigger universal theme that the world needs to hear, that they currently aren't hearing in the right way – that's always a draw for me. I've worked a lot in activism and championing communities who are othered, and so anything that goes in that direction is definitely up my alley. And then especially if it has to do with Black women, and then taking it further, it has to do with dance. I used to be a dancer before I even started working in film and television. So when it had dance in it, that just put the extra sauce on it, and it was Amazon, who I love. It had all the pieces; Lizzo's amazing, the girls are incredible. I got to watch some of their tapes. And then when [Amazon] said that I could bring my take to it, I was, like, ‘I have to do it.’

Lizzo seems like someone who really lives what she says – what is she like to work with?

Working with Lizzo is fun because she's hilarious, she just tells lots of jokes. She listens to you as a director. Working with talent isn't always the easiest but Lizzo's very easy-going onset. Any of the creative direction I've ever given her, she was open to taking, and she was very intentional about making sure that there wasn't anything negative between the girls but that they had a positive experience. That's all you can ask for when you're working with an artist, so she was amazing to work with.

Your projects, in various ways, have ties to your activist roots and your desire to tackle stories that aren’t often heard. Was there anything that was challenging about this particular way of doing that – especially the reality TV format?

Yeah, I was, like, ‘How do I make this authentic to me?’ And I think that making that authentic to me meant that I had to bring some realism and some beautiful visuals and documentary elements to it. My pitch was, ‘This needs to feel real, and it needs to feel fresh and young.’ Sometimes the challenge when you come into a new genre of television is that they might be used to things being done a certain way. I come from film, and in film, you tell the story directly with the people, and normally in a reality series there's a little bit of a separation between subjects and the actual process, but for me, I completely broke the format and went into spending time with the girls. I got from behind the control room and in with them because that's my style of storytelling.

You went back to Nigeria when you were working on the Legend of the Underground - how did that trip impact you?

And how has that experience informed your work going forward?

It has a great impact in my life. It's funny, being raised African American in the United States and then being raised also by my father, who's Nigerian, I always had those two dual upbringings. I feel like I was able to connect with how much of our art, like dance, comes straight from Nigeria and Africa, and how so many things have been beaten out of us, how they've been systematically taken away from us, and making us feel like the credit belongs to someone else. But it actually comes from Nigerian roots. Things like dance, for this show, things like our food, the way we move, our bodies and how they're supposed to be built. Things like that, I think are inherently African, and I think expending more time there made me see it in a more authentic way. I always knew it intellectually, but until you experience something you can't really know it. Spending time in Nigeria and just immersing myself around people who are like me – from the soul, spirit and blood – really has a deep impact on me that I think will never go away. It’s in the forefront of my mind now.