Loved 'Get Out'? This Horror Comedy Is For You

The *Only* Black Girl

Hulu's horror comedy The Other Black Girl turns workplace narratives on their head. Prahlad Srihari writes.

IN the season premiere of The Other Black Girl, a put-upon Black editorial assistant named Nella (Sinclair Daniel) finally works up the courage to provide honest feedback on the latest novel by Colin Franklin (Brian Baumgartner), the bestselling white male author who happens to be her white employer’s golden goose. The novel about America’s opioid crisis features all but one Black character: Shartricia, who is an addict with a baby daddy and only addicts for friends. Nella rightly calls Colin out for peddling such a harmful caricature. With tact. Without impertinence.

Franklin responds by going on the defensive. With the patronising tone of a fragile white male. Without copping to his blind spot. “I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy the book, it’s not for everybody,” he suggests. “I don’t even see colour,” he later protests. Nella is further admonished by her white boss Vera (Bellamy Young) for providing feedback instead of validation. The scene captures the everyday horrors faced by Black women even in a rarefied industry where optics are everything.

With Zakiya Dalila Harris adapting her own 2021 novel of the same name for the small screen, the 10-part workplace thriller could well be seen as an expansion. Nella spends every workday navigating the minefield that is the Manhattan publishing house Wagner Books. Being the only Black employee in a lily-white company (headed by a man so white he is married to a Kennedy), she must put up with tokenisation, microaggressions and the passive-aggressive whims of a boss who will declare “diversity matters” one moment and marginalise her for speaking up the next.

Each obstacle in the rat race prompts her to ask: How do you reform a system rigged against you from within? How long can you keep swallowing your pride to appease those who only expect you to conform? How can you keep your identity intact if you keep making sacrifices day after day to fit into white spaces?

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EVERYDAY HORROR

'The Other Black Girl' Is What Happens When Racism Compounds Office Politics

By Prahlad Srihari

When you are the only person who looks like you in a workplace and you don’t trust any colleague enough to confide in or rant to, going to work can sure be an isolating and anxious experience. All the more so at Wagner, where the sole colleague itching to connect with Nella is Sophie (Kate Owens), a white woman who is a little too eager to lend rhetorical support to diversity and inclusion. With each awkward encounter, you get the feeling Sophie is expecting to be thanked for merely professing her solidarity. Being an ally, for Sophie, is to assert moral superiority and avoid potential scrutiny. Not to acknowledge her privilege or transfer the advantages of that privilege to help the marginalised enact meaningful change. The myth of corporate meritocracy clashes with the reality of private hypocrisy. Nella’s loneliness thus foregrounds the challenges Black women must endure in a workplace where they feel obligated to code-switch and water down their Blackness so as to not discomfort their co-workers.

It stands to reason why Nella wishes for at least one other Black co-worker. If there was another woman like her, she wouldn’t have to second-guess herself all the time. Her wish is granted when Wagner brings on Hazel-May McCall (Ashleigh Murray) — the Other Black Girl — as an editorial assistant. At once, there’s relief, there’s joy, there’s renewed confidence over finally having an actual ally she can rely upon. Or so she thinks. Not long after the two bond over lunch and share their love for “Burning Heart” (a novel written and edited by two Black women at Wagner decades ago), Nella finds her editorial position under threat. If she can’t determine if Hazel is an ally or adversary soon, she may lose her mind with it.

As workplace anxieties spiral into paranoid nightmares, Nella starts to question her own sanity. Lights flicker to sinister effect. Reflections staring back in the mirror are not always her own. An anonymous note urges her to “LEAVE WAGNER NOW.” However, the scares are so cravenly engineered they are rendered inert. There is a yawning chasm between the show’s satirical aspirations and its flat, almost mechanical, direction. Comedy and horror are often at odds with each other. For a satire to bite, not just nibble, the two must sing in chorus.

If sanctuary exists for Nella, it is located only outside the workplace, in her Brooklyn home with white boyfriend Owen (Hunter Parrish) and BFF Malaika (Brittany Adebumola). Once the show moves into conspiracy thriller territory, it is Owen and Malaika who do a lot of the investigating. Malaika’s Spidey-sense makes her the voice of the audience and the kind of BFF you want by your side to keep you out of trouble. In a scene-stealing turn, Adebumola steps in to puncture the tension with comical outbursts — only when the show really needs it.

At the root of the conspiracy is a sci-fi device which — like the spoon clanking against a teacup in Get Out — hypnotises Black women and keeps them restrained in the Sunken Place. It is meant to ensure their optimum productivity while still remaining in the shadow of white people. But the key to unlock the conspiracy lies in the story of two other Black women whose paths similarly diverged: Diana Gordon (Garcelle Beauvais), the author of “Burning Heart,” and her best friend Kendra Rae Phillips (April Parker Jones), Wagner’s first and only Black editor who has been missing for decades. The parallel and intersecting stories of Nella-Hazel and Kendra-Diana force viewers to consider the schisms that systemic racism creates, the mistrust it breeds, and the self-doubt that seeps in, making the marginalised question their identity and very place in the world.

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