Zoë-Kaye Oliver
Zoë-Kaye Oliver is a writer, director, actor, and film lover. Though she has many scripts and projects in the works, right now she’s pitching her series to Sony and is working on a feature film she wrote called Unbloomed.
We got the chance to chat (virtually, of course) about what Zoë hopes to change in the industry and her world with her stories, how to get the confidence to put your work out there, and more. Read/listen to Zoë’s story and her ideas! She’s the coolest. And trust me, we’ll all be binging a series that she wrote sooner rather than later.
How do you identify yourself as an artist?
It’s so weird because I have just started telling people that I’m a writer and I no longer identify with actors— which is very weird because I went to acting school for 14 years and then in the last year I started to do writing for the screen. Of course, along the way in acting school you get screenwriting courses, playwriting courses, short film courses, so I’ve actually been writing the entire time. At Stonestreet (one of the acting studios at NYU Tisch) was the first time I was in the driver’s seat of completely making my own work and writing and directing, and I also took a short film class that same semester and I was like oh this is so much better than when I was just a woman of color, resume in hand, begging for a job.
That is definitely different than other actors begging for a job because by the second semester (at Stonestreet) people were still like tell me what my type is. And when we’d get the chance to talk to casting directors they’d be like tell me what I can play. And I hate the answer to that question that I’ve been given so I’m just gonna stop asking. In order to stop asking, I need to not only stop asking with my mouth but stop asking with what I’m investing my energy in and who I’m sending my resume to and what I’m spending time on.
So, I am an actor. I am a director. I love film, and I love creating stories just as much as I love consuming them. I would say that’s my multi-hyphenate: writer-actor-director-film lover.
Why did you start acting, and writing and directing? What do you love about it?
What motivated you to start getting more serious about your writing to end up with a full-length feature film screenplay? And this question has a lot of aspects to it— what inspired you to write Unbloomed? If you feel comfortable talking about it, where did it come from? I just feel like there’s a certain level of motivation and confidence in your work that you have to have to really put it out there, start a GoFundMe for it , and to be like we’re going to make this into a realized piece.
But in terms of Unbloomed, I think the confidence to— if you don’t feel like your work is good, watch more movies. You’ll be fine. There is a movie that Netflix just did that was. . . bad. It was really bad. It was produced by Netflix, it was a Netflix original and I was like why? I watched it and was like oh my god, Netflix put their name on this. I sent it to my friends and they were like oh I feel so much better about my work now and I was like yeah, you don’t realize how much bad stuff gets made.
That’s true, that’s such a funny but good way to think about it.
There’s also a podcast called How Did This Get Made? It’s just about different movies that are bad and they try and figure out how it got made.
Yeah sometimes you see stuff and you wonder how it got funding and got so many people on board. . .
There are so many movies like that. And people speak about what they do and don’t want from the movies they consume and what they haven’t been getting from the movies they consume and you can listen to them. Studios don’t have to. But independent filmmakers totally can.
There are several movements about movies starring Black people only being about Black pain and how we don’t want to see that anymore. And I watched a video essay about queer people and their depictions being also all about pain and suffering. The video essay had many more examples and was more constructed and actually showed the psychological effects. I mean it’s everywhere— my friends were sending me TikTok’s of this one guy who was like I’m so tired of seeing movies with Black people just be about slavery, police brutality, the struggle, the hustle, dancing to save the community center. Like I’m so tired of that. And I was like yeah! Me too! I am a queer Black person who lives a queer Black life that isn’t about like, well of course I experience racism and homophobia on a regular basis, but I have so much more to my life and my experience and my community than just the pain.
Right, like you don’t let that define your everyday life.
Exactly. I think that to people who don’t identify as those things, only showcasing our pain and our shame rather than giving full humanity to queer people and Black people and to women, is a disservice.
Unbloomed may or may not have come from real life in various ways. . . some details have been changed but I would call myself a late-bloomer.
I had a friend and we made a bunch of pacts— I have a bunch of friends with whom I make pacts with, I made a pact about moving to California and you know, I have a pact with a friend where if we’re both single by the time we’re 30 we move to Colorado, adopt a son who will call us by our first names and start a cannabis farm (laughs). That’s our pact.
Um it’s also a great idea for a show.
It’s so exciting to watch you have that confidence of being like “yeah, some stuff out there is trashy so how bad could my piece be?” That’s so smart honestly.
Also, John Early did a fake 73 questions and it’s so funny and so perfect and you have to watch it. He talks about how he and Kate Berlant, who he does a lot of work with, pitched their series and got passed over by every major network and streaming service and yet pedophiles are allowed to continue to make work freely. I think about that all the time. About how you’ll hear about this famous director doing something awful and the press will be like can he be forgiven? He doesn’t need to be forgiven! I mean maybe yes but not professionally. He doesn’t need to be let back into the industry. And then I’m like: Let me make a movie! I wouldn’t touch anybody!
Even with actors. . . I’ve been thinking about how “method acting” is just an excuse for white men to be toxic. So again, let me be in the movie because I know the secret to this thing called imagination! I wouldn’t make anybody uncomfortable, you wouldn’t have to give me awards for being so crazy that I killed a fellow cast mate’s grandmother because I was getting into character. On both ends, on the storytelling end and on the storytellers end there are bad things and people happening. And if you are neither of those things, which is not that hard to be, then you owe it to yourself and the people you will work with in the future and the people who will see your work to have the confidence to be like: I’m not gonna touch anybody and also the work I’m doing is good, so yeah.
Those really do feel like the standards.
Yeah so that’s my motto!!
What changes do you hope to see in the spaces that you hope to be employed in someday in the industry?
I was just thinking about colorism and how that’s a problem no one’s really talking about. It’s unfortunate but I think there is a cynicism and a callousness that Black people have because we know what it’s like to have there be a big moment and a big discussion and then have things go right back to the way they were. I remember someone talking about: “oh why is everybody choosing George Floyd to be the person you’re protesting around?” and I was like “No, we protested for Trayvon Martin years ago, you just weren’t there.” I hope that things don’t go back to the way they were before but I know that they will. And it’s really discouraging.
What else in addition do you feel is most important/unique to your writing process?
I would say what’s most unique to my writing process is that I write a script by hand first which is . . . so time consuming.
Oh that’s cool.
I couldn’t tell you why I’m Edgar Allen Poe but I think it helps me get a handle on the script and I can scribble things out; it matches the speed and rawness of a story as opposed to (mimes typing calmly).
I think the culmination of all of my years of film watching goes into every single script. When I’m writing I think about every movie that I’ve ever seen and their pitfalls and I think I’m not so delusional to think that everything that I make is unique and original and there’s nothing like that out there but I’ll think okay so the stuff that has been made out there, what was it missing and how can we make it better? How could we make it something that more people can be connected to and involved in? So I think that in writing the script that I just pitched as a series, I thought about Tahar Raheem who’s this French Algerian actor and he was like “I’ll never play a terrorist” and he has had an amazing career not playing terrorists. But the fact that he had to say that and there was a whole article about it and then he has to find these little pockets of work. He was in a Hulu show called the looming tower where he played a translator for brown men that were play terrorists and I was like: the fact that his not playing a terrorist is in such close proximity to brown men who maybe don’t have the same apprehensions but this is what they play, is unfair. If you say “I”m not going to play a terrorist” your option should not be “oh, the translator for the terrorists.”
Right.
For example, have you seen Independence Day?
No sadly.
In it, the only Black woman in the movie plays a stripper. For what reason? I couldn’t tell you. But that would be like me now being like “I’ll never play a stripper” but then playing the waitress who works at the strip club and has to wipe down the pole or something. I don’t think you should write a script where in your head, as your writing it, there’s all white people in it and then at the end of the process being like “Oh! This is gonna be a Black person and this character is gonna be an East Asian person.” So just being mindful from the beginning and finding the balance between erasure and exploitation. There’s only one movie I’ve seen in my life where I was like this did it right and I keep that one in mind while I’m writing.
And what movie do you think did it right?
What are your goals, aspirations, hopes and dreams, for the scripts that you’re writing and your career?
It’s so funny— in so many of the meditations that I do it asks me to describe my ideal day. And my career factors into bits and pieces of it, but there’s a certain steadiness to my future career without consistency necessarily. So I’m not like: I’m a series regular and everyday I know that I have a job to wake up and go to. It’s different, sometimes I’m consulting on a piece, sometimes I’m a beta reader, and sometimes in these fantasies of my ideal life I spend all day working on a film script or maybe I am an actor in a film regularly going to work. There’s not complacency and an expectation to do the same thing everyday but I do think that everyday I have a job to do.
To have my hands in a bunch of different pots, but not from a place of lack or desperation. From a place of professionalism and being sought after— I don’t want to have to lean in to being Black and queer to get into rooms just because diversity is hot right now, I want to be sought after because my work can speak for itself.
I can’t wait to watch your career unfold and say I knew her when. Just kidding I can say I know her now because you’re already doing the thing. So I usually wrap up with some fun speed round questions! To start, what was the last thing you watched on your screen?
Yes God Yes with Natalia Dyer.
What was the last book that you read?
The Girl He Used to Know by Tracey Garvis Graves. I didn’t finish it. I give every book a hundred pages to rock my world and I got to page 130 and then I just google what happened at the end. I’m reading The Hating Game next and then after that I’m reading The Song of Achilles.
What’s bringing you joy right now?
Movies. . . listen to the rest of Zoë’s answer below:
If you could tell a younger version of yourself one thing, what would it be?
I think about this a lot and I wouldn’t tell her anything. Maybe when I get older and if something happened I would warn myself about it, but I think if I could go back in time to my younger self in literally any age, even at last week, I would crawl into bed with her and wrap my arms around her for the whole night and give her unconditional love, no time limit, no expectations, support, and comfort which was the only thing that she wanted, and the only thing that she needed, and the only thing that she didn’t have.
I would be like: you can cry all night, we can talk movies, we can do nothing and lay next to each other and stare at the ceiling. That’s literally all I wanted was just unconditional, no boundaries comfort and safety and I didn’t get that. I would go back in time and give myself that and tell myself to only accept that from now on.
That’s beautiful. And that’s also a wrap! Thank you Zoë for sharing your story.
Check out Zoë ’s website here, her Instagram page here, and consider donating to help fund Unbloomed here.
