‘Forever' Showrunner Mara Brock Akil Wants to ‘Give Boys Their Full Humanity'

Yahoo

22-05-2025

The Friday before the new Netflix adaptation of Judy Blume's novel Forever was set to release, its creator Mara Brock Akil was power-walking through New York City for exercise. The Los Angeles resident was in town doing a round of press to support the show, and, in a full-circle moment, found herself on the campus of NYU, a college her lead character, Justin (Michael Cooper Jr.), considers when gaming out his future in Episode Seven. The moment forced Akil to pause and reflect in the midst of crunch time. Forever's release hit close to home for the longtime TV writer and showrunner in a way much of her other work has not. Mainly, that's because the muse behind the eight-episode series is her older son, Yasin, 21.
'As a mother, I'm very emotional,' says Akil when we speak by Zoom just after her walk. Her voice cracks in between tears as she speaks about Yasin and her youngest son, Nasir, 16. We bond over being parents of boys. My own son is a little over five-and-a-half — not old enough to watch Forever's tale of teen sex and love — but I tell Akil that when he's of age, the show will be required viewing. 'This project came from that love for our sons that has some fear in it,' she says. 'My son is out in the world and thriving, but the catastrophic parenting part of me, I had to let her go. It's hard, but part of this project is therapizing.'
More from Rolling Stone
Madonna Biopic Series With Shawn Levy in the Works at Netflix: Report
Karol G Celebrates Netflix Documentary Release with 'Milagros'
7 Things We Learned From Karol G's 'Tomorrow Was Beautiful' Documentary
If you've been watching television since the 1990s, you know Akil's work. From her days in the writers room for hit shows like Moesha to her own creations — from Girlfriends to The Game and Being Mary Jane — Akil's canvas has always reflected the current times and the lived experience of Black women she knows. Characters like Joan (Girlfriends), Melanie (The Game) and Mary Jane not only solidified the range of actors like Tracee Ellis Ross, Tia Mowry, and Gabrielle Union (respectively) but allowed Black women to examine their complexities and humanity through the safety and context of the screen. Now, Forever — which has been renewed for a second season — brings that sensitivity and energy to an exploration of adolescence and first love.
'My whole body of work, starting with Girlfriends, especially, I have been wanting to carve out the vulnerability of Blackness,' says Akil. 'Now, having a front row seat to raising boys, I wanted to give them their full humanity. Which includes wobbling through not feeling secure one minute and feeling very secure the next.'
Blume released Forever, her seventh novel, 50 years ago. It was the author's response to a request from her teenage daughter, who was curious but intimidated by sex, due to its often violent and scary depictions in literature. Blume's story follows a teenager named Katherine who falls in love with a boy named Michael and loses her virginity to him. Throughout the book's 26 chapters, Blume examines the question of whether or not first loves are eternal. While it would later be banned (even in Blume's children's school district) for being 'sexually explicit for younger readers,' its publication was a revolutionary act at the time, in step with the 'Love Movement' that fueled the 1970s. For Akil, who was five when Forever came out but read it several years later, when she was around 12, its impact was monumental.
'What Judy did was badass,' says Akil. 'Judy gave young girls the idea that they can be honest about the emotional and physical things happening to them, and they could explore it in a healthy way and still have a future.'
While she was a fan of Blume's work, as a young girl Akil was often forced to reimagine Blume's white characters such as Katherine and Michael in her own likeness and melanated being. So in 2020, when Akil got word that Blume was ready to partner with Netflix in bringing one of her books to a major streaming service for the first time, she jumped at the opportunity to make her pre-teen visions a reality. 'My younger self didn't even wait for a conference call,' says Akil. 'She just raised her hand and was like 'I want in on that.'
Akil says she was the one who pushed Forever as a suitable adaptation. According to Akil, Blume hadn't considered it; she didn't think there was much curiosity around sex in this modern age of technology and information. But Akil knew there was an untapped audience for the story.
'Judy and I talked about how I was going to translate the book,' says Akil. 'She wrote the book at the time to have a conversation with her daughter about sex and making healthy choices around her future. Katherine is the most vulnerable in society, and we looked at her and watched her chart her life. I posit that young Black men are the most vulnerable in society as they enter into the heart and physical space of first love, exploration, and desire.' She adds, 'To reimagine it for a Black young adult in Los Angeles in 2018 was the perfect alchemy for me.'
Although Akil nods to certain plot points within Blume's novel — like the teens meeting at a New Year's Eve party where fondue is a noted delicacy — her unique storytelling shines through. The lives of Justin and his love interest, Keisha (Lovie Simone), feel deeply considered, and offer commentary on not just teen issues but everything from gender roles to parenting, socioeconomics, and an education system that is unsupportive of neurodivergence. Where Blume's 1975 version prioritizes the voice of Katherine, Akil points the lens towards Justin, who — in the most refreshing ways — is the opposite of what traditional media presents in depicting Black boyhood. He's not the star basketball player (he's actually benched for a good portion of the season) and is quite perceptive and sensitive to the world around him. 'Images of Black boys have positioned them more as man-children than allowing them to have their childhood,' says Akil. 'Justin's honesty and maturity actually is linked to ADHD. A lot of our children are misdiagnosed in the system. Not detecting the way [Black] children learn sends them in the wrong direction, and for Black boys that is a direct correlation to prison.'
In Akil's story, Justin and Keisha are elementary-school classmates who've reconnected, now navigating the anxieties around their last years of high school and the grown-up decisions that await them. Keisha, an around-the-way girl from 'below the 10' (that is, South L.A.), is a straight-A student who is banking on her academics and track stardom to earn a full ride to Howard University. Her drive is a trauma response to witnessing the financial struggles of her single mom (Xosha Roquemore) — so much so that when she faces a sexual violation by another student at her old private school, she suffers in silence so as to not be seen as an inconvenience.
Justin, meanwhile, lives in the hills of L.A, with his father Eric (Wood Harris), a renowned chef, and his high-strung but well-intentioned mother Dawn (Karen Pittman). Unlike Keisha, Justin is uncertain of the future — a privilege afforded to him by his family's financial security — and viewers journey with him as he battles his learning and developmental differences and his parents' expectations, which blind him to his own desires. The contrasts we see throughout are a testament to Akil's intentionality. Blume's Michael was viewed through the lens of Katherine — a radical move for the time period, having a man silenced and decentered; Justin's positioning here is just as revolutionary.
Akil presents Justin's perspective of the adults molding him. Consistently, we feel the tension between him and his mom, who — while attuned to his wave of emotions as he navigates his first love and heartbreak — has a hard time navigating her own feelings and fears. Aware of his ADHD, she is often the balloon-popper of his daydreams, holding him accountable for his future and pushing him in spite of his differences. Yet she is also hyper-aware of who he is in society and what that means in the year 2018, following the killings of young Black boys like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. 'As a parent raising Black boys, I think they're the most innocent and precious, but right after fourth grade, [in society's eyes] they're no longer adorable and cute,' Akil says, becoming teary-eyed again. 'As Black parents in a Black household, you might over-protect your sons for their safety.'
It's through Dawn that we see Akil's strength for writing Black women characters with depth, agency, and complexity. We also see fatherhood through Justin's lens. Eric is often the buffer between Justin and Dawn, able to set boundaries while giving Justin more leeway to grow up and have natural experiences. But what is natural when you are Black in a racist America? 'If you're raising Black boys you have to tell them about rape,' Akil says. 'It's not their disease, it's America's disease on them, but you have to protect them from it and that is the most heartbreaking thing.' It would be easy to compare Eric as 'good cop' to Dawn's 'bad.' Yet the lessons he teaches — such as the importance of consent, wearing condoms, and facing hard conversations — feel like a starter kit to parenting adolescent boys in a more conscious society, and it's refreshing to witness.
Although a secondary character, Keisha also offers a beautiful mediation on the rite of passage from Black girlhood to womanhood. We see early on how her traumas, while kept internal, motivate her towards success — a testament to Black women in America, who oftentimes are lovingly teased for their influx of degrees and certifications obtained in the aftermath of tragedy. In Blume's Forever, Michael had more sexual experience than Katherine. In Akil's, that role was paved for Keisha, whose sexual encounter while attending a majority-white private school speaks to the dangers of technology but also exposes racist taboos and the lack of safety that burdens Black girls from autonomous sexuality. 'I wanted to talk about the white institutions of it all and what it's doing to Black girls,' says Akil. 'Throughout the story, Keisha is coming into her beauty and body. As smart as she is, she's having to chart this new attention.'
The beauty of Forever is that despite difficult moments in its episodes, there is no overt trauma; and yet, there is much to question and unpack. How do we revamp the educational system — even the workforce — to be inclusive for neurodivergent people? What is the balance of parenting children in ways that are gentle yet firm? How can adults, hardened by life's woes, revamp their own first-love feeling in their day to day?
'My version of Forever comes from the compassion of the youth,' Akil says. 'Not only was the world telling them they didn't matter, but we as parents were loving them from that fearful place and were narrowing their gap to exist and to have these normal rites of passage. I'm just trying to make space for young people to have their humanity. We should be so blessed to witness them make healthy choices and continue to bloom and help nudge them and protect them, and that's not happening. This generation, of all ages, are lonely as ever. We might know how to have sex, but we're losing intimacy.'
As Forever debuted over Mother's Day weekend, the boy who took my virginity — my first love — sent me a text to wish me a happy one. It's a ritual we've maintained since our own mishap in high school, when we almost became teen parents. Although imperfect, the parental guidance on sexuality within Forever is what I wish our teenage selves had to support us. And still, Forever drives home that even if a connection parts ways, you never forget a genuine soul. A reminder that life isn't scripted, though the right script can help us imagine different possibilities for ourselves, our children, and our community.
'When you see great art reflected, it really asks the viewers to engage in a bunch of questions and conversations,' Akil says. 'I want people to remember that level of joy around their first, just to remember that feeling and want that in our lives for ourselves. And because we want that for ourselves, we make space for our children to love themselves, each other, and choose wisely the future that's aligned to them.'
Best of Rolling Stone
The 50 Best 'Saturday Night Live' Characters of All Time
Denzel Washington's Movies Ranked, From Worst to Best
70 Greatest Comedies of the 21st Century