‘Black Cake’ Author Charmaine Wilkerson Credits Series Team With ‘Extending the Dream’ of Her Novel

“Black Cake” author Charmaine Wilkerson didn’t know she was writing a novel right away.

Her process involved short stories, scenes and snippets that came to her before she collected them all into what became the best-selling multigenerational family saga mixed with a murder mystery and laid the foundation for Hulu’s television adaptation. “Black Cake” the series comes from showrunner Marissa Jo Cerar and Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films as well as Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment in what Wilkerson describes as “a lovely combination of creative minds.”

Byron (Ashley Thomas) and Benny (Adrienne Warren) grew up with a solid idea of who their mother, Eleanor Bennett (Chipo Chung), was, but her recent death challenges their image of Bennett, who recounts her complex past in an audio recording left behind on a flash drive. The layers of Eleanor’s story begin with a young girl named Covey (Mia Isaac), who was forced to give up a lot of true aspects of her identity because of decisions made by her father Lin (Simon Wan) and others. The layers of Covey/Eleeanor’s life culminate to challenge Byron, Benny and their long-lost sibling Mabel (Sonita Henry) to dive deeper into who they are and where they come from.

Wilkerson discussed her work on the series adaptation, themes within the story and more below:

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What did your role as executive producer on the show adaptation of your book entail?

In my case, that’s a fancy way of saying a consultant on the creative process, which was driven by Marisa Jo Cerarr, and hundreds of very talented people, including screenwriters and actors, of course, technical cruise directors, and all of those people who helped to create the illusion that goes on the screen. So makeup, wardrobe, everything. I wrote a novel, and that’s a big part of what I did. What was wonderful was that the screen process was another approach to storytelling. It was an extensional amplification of a world that I created. And so Marissa Jo Cerar and everyone else went forward with their vision. They were extending the dream that is created in a novel, and then they would come back to me with questions. Then there would be a sharing of scripts, sharing of rough cuts of episodes. So I was involved, but I saw myself as pass[ing] the ball to the other side of the court. Then I would wait for it to come back. While it was out there, it was growing and evolving into another kind of story.

Was there anything, whether you were asked or in the beginning, that you stipulated that you felt had to make it from the book into the show? What was important to drill down?

From the very start, people were approaching me and saying what they took away from the book, what they wanted to bring to the screen, how they saw the relationship between what’s on the written page, and the story that will take on a new life on the screen. It began from a position of here’s what we think, and I went into this process thinking I liked the way in which they’re approaching this. I understand that I wrote a novel and that there might be something a little different on the screen. I felt that it was important to sit back and see what was coming out of the creative visions of all of those other talented people. So I would not say that I felt that there was something that had to be in the screenplays or on the screen. I waited to see what was coming out. Then there were opportunities to make comments.

Water is such an important theme in the story – did you want to unify the story and plot with water?

When I sat down to write, I didn’t know I was writing a novel at first because I like to write short fiction as well. So I had a number of different scenes, but there was one scene that kept growing, and it was the very first thing that I can remember writing and it was about a feeling. The feeling was, what would it be like to be so full of confidence and strength, that you felt that everything was possible? And that the only thing stopping you would be the expectations and stereotypes and pressures brought into your life by other people.

That feeling of great strength and confidence manifested itself as two girls swimming in the sea. So it was an organic thing. Sea just came from my imagination, but then it began to take on more meaning because I realized that the sea is like a metaphor for everything in our life. It is about the currents that flow between one person and another across time and space. It is about everything that lifts us up in life and all the things that frighten us because the sea has everything. It has mystery, it has danger. It has beauty, it buoys us, it gives us buoyancy, and so it was natural for that to be a strong theme in this story because as I went from the past, with those two girls swimming in the sea in the 1960s in the Caribbean, and moved forward into the present, again, it was natural because I was dealing with two California siblings to see the sea again as a life-giving force but also a potential threat as a metaphor for everything that we face in our lives. For me personally, the sea has always been present. I was born in a coastal city in New York. I, as a child, did move to Jamaica and spent time near the sea. And I’ve always almost always lived in coastal cities and water has always been important to me, in particular the sea as opposed to rivers or lakes.

How did you navigate the idea that the truth stirs up all sorts of things? Do you think Benny and Byron are better for knowing their mother’s true past?

The novel and the idea of family secrets which you’ve raised goes to the heart of something that interests me very much: the idea of identity. I’m going to step back a moment from the question and say something about myself, because this is not an autobiographical story, but if it mirrors anything about me as an individual or writer it’s about the idea that I feel we have multiple identities. I come from a multicolored, multicultural family. I’ve lived in a number of different countries. I live in a place where I don’t even speak my mother tongue on a daily basis, and I’ve had different kinds of professions. So like many people, my idea of who I am, and the world around me may shift over time. One of the things that I feel has a huge influence on the way in which we see ourselves or our world is the story that’s told, the story that we are told about who we are and the story we tell about the stories we tell to other people about who we are. Going back to the novel, this is a story about two siblings who discovered their mother had a hidden past. So the stories on which they have built their identity, their ideas of their relationships, and what counts, all of that is now thrown into doubt by their mother’s revelations, on top of which they’re going to have to face concrete consequences that come from her hidden past.

You asked me if I think is it better or worse. I wrote the novel as it is. I think that when we write fiction, as opposed to writing things that seem to be based on fact, when people like me write about invented characters in imaginary scenarios, in a way we come closer to the truth than anything because we dare to look at difficult situations. We dare to consider worst-case scenarios. We celebrate very deeply the joys that we experience in life. In this particular case, though, we often explore without providing answers. So I’m going to throw that question back to you. What is better? I don’t know. I wrote a story in which I dared to ask those questions and explore the possibilities. When you write a book, you start a conversation. I do think that Byron and Benny are beginning the story in a difficult place. They’ve been estranged from one another. They’re feeling lost, and they’ve now lost their mother. So they have a lot to gain. It’s just that at the beginning of the story, you’re not sure if their mother’s revelations are going to help them to be closer to one another, and to go forward or keep them feeling lost. They have a lot of questions. So I don’t like to answer that question. I like to say, I keep exploring.

If the show gets another season, will you want to remain involved in the executive producer capacity?

I am delighted that so many talented people have chosen to take “Black Cake” the novel and give it an amplified, bigger, different kind of life in the hearts of other people. I would be delighted if they continue to work on this and bring life to that story because I’ve always loved books, but I also love the work that’s done on film. And I don’t expect quite the same thing from a novel that I expect on the screen. It’s been very exciting to see this story to grow and evolve on the screen and I’d be happy to see that continue and I’m happy to share in that vision.

What’s next for you?

I am working on a second novel. It is another novel that is multigenerational in that it goes between the past and the present. It does deal with issues of identity and issues of how you incorporate the past into your present and your identity. Those are very general terms. Literally, it’s quite different so I’m very excited about bringing this new story to readers. It will take a while, but I’m getting there.

All eight episodes of Season 1 of “Black Cake” are now streaming on Hulu.

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