Growing up on the south side, writer and actress Lena Waithe, now 32, looked to four pillars of television: The Cosby Show, Martin, Living Single, and A Different World: to this day her Twitter handle, @HillmanGrad, is homage to the fictional college attended by Denise Huxtable, Whitley Gilbert, and Dwayne Wayne.
Denise was originally supposed to be a straight, white woman. But after Waithe met with Ansari and cocreator Alan Yang, they decided to switch things up and base the character on her, in keeping with the show’s vision of portraying diverse points of view. Season two (premiering in April 2017) will focus even more on Denise’s world, shedding light on the LGBT community in a way that Waithe says she hasn’t yet seen in television.
Sun 11/6, 1 PM Art Institute of Chicago 230 S. Columbus 312-494-9509tickets.chicagohumanities.org $12, $5 students and teachers
