Burning sage. Healing sessions. Yoga classes. Filmmaker Caprice Williams admits that when she was a kid, she would have assumed that anyone who did these things was a total weirdo. Yet they’re practices that adult Caprice now preaches, ones that feature prominently in her new webseries Journey. In episode one, Magnolia (played by Williams) threatens to sage every part of her friend Gia (Antoinette Drummer). In episode two, Magnolia learns about the intuitive powers of tea. And in episode three, Magnolia invites a spiritual guide to join a party with her friends. While the moments are at times played for laughs in the series, what they represent is something that Williams takes very seriously.
The flow of the series is a lot like the steps of getting to know Williams: On first meeting there’s an immediate joyfulness that radiates, plenty of wit, charm, and warmth. As time goes on, that layer never quite goes away, but slightly fades to show the pain underneath, the past tragedies that led her to this point. Being able to find the balance between the two has been a priority for her in life and in her art.
“He’s Polish,” Williams says of Wasowski, “and I think his accent just made everything super pleasant for me, even when he was telling me I’m doing something wrong. I was like a kid in a candy store. I was ready for that knowledge, I was ready for the critiques, for the criticisms for everything, for people to tell me, ‘I think you need to do this a little better.’”
“My daughter is super creative, she knows how to draw, like, she could be an artist,” Williams says. “She loves to dance, she loves to sing. She could be Beyoncé. She could be whatever she wants to be, all I know is I need to just support her and whatever decision she chooses to make.”
Going forward, Williams is ready for anything that stands in her way, and in some ways embraces those obstacles. Slowly but surely she’s sharing more of her own story, not to dwell on the past, but as the only way she knows to move forward and thrive.
