‘Love, Brooklyn’ Director on Making a Script Written for White Characters About Black Culture
For her debut feature “Love, Brooklyn,” director Rachael Abigail Holder knew she “really wanted to play my own song.” But she did so with a script she came across that was a love letter to the city of Brooklyn — but one in which all the characters were initially white.
“Their culture wasn’t defined, so I could fill in the paint in that way,” Holder said at the IndieWire Studio, presented by Dropbox. “A script originally written for white characters needed a culture to be infused into to it, so it wasn’t really a challenge, it was an exciting venture to choose what that culture would be. We didn’t just want the characters to be Black period. Blackness is a wide scope of people, and I wanted them to be specific.”
More from IndieWire
“Love, Brooklyn” stars André Holland, Roy Wood Jr., DeWanda Wise, Nicole Beharie, and Cassandra Freeman. The story follows a love triangle between three longtime Brooklynites who navigate careers, love, loss, and friendship against the rapidly changing landscape of their beloved city.
Holland, who is a producer on the film as well as its star, said that Black actors often get used to playing parts not necessarily written for them, from Shakespeare to Ibsen and Chekhov.
“One of the things we all have to do at times as actors of color is imagine characters in circumstances that maybe weren’t constructed with us in mind,” he said. “We often have to fabulate ourselves into these spaces. This one, I think was a wonderful opportunity to do that. And to his credit, our writer Paul Zimmerman was like, Great! Let’s figure out what this is.”
While the actors all had different reasons for being drawn to the film, a shared love of Brooklyn was the commonality.
“[It’s] what it’s like to really hold onto something that you love so dearly, even though it’s slipping through your fingers, especially for the nostalgia of a place like Brooklyn, it’s really magical,” Beharie said.
“What this movie is today will not be true 10 years from now,” Freeman added. “Brooklyn, depending on what burough you’re in or what street, you get a very different character.”
Holder too said the film was especially personal for her, even though it wasn’t written specifically about the Brooklyn she grew up in.
“I grew up in Brooklyn, not as a child, but as a young adult. I was an artist in Brooklyn, I went to graduate school, so this story felt like it was really about me and my community when I read it, even though our writer, who is decades older than me, it was written about his 20s,” she said. “Brooklyn is such a special place that it can feel timeless that he can write about his 20s and it can feel like my own.”
“Love, Brooklyn” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film is seeking distribution.
Dropbox is proud to partner with IndieWire and the Sundance Film Festival. In 2025, 68% of feature films premiering at the Sundance Film Festival used Dropbox in their film production. Dropbox helps filmmakers and creative teams find, organize, and secure all the files that are important to any project.
Best of IndieWire
Sign up for Indiewire's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
