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In 2019, Matthew A. Cherry’s Oscar-winning animated short Hair Love offered a beautiful snapshot of a Black father learning to fix his young daughter’s hair while his wife was away at the hospital. Now, the beloved project has inspired Young Love, a charming new series that premiered on Max on Sept. 21 and continues to air new episodes throughout October. The show offers a comedic look at the lives of Black millennial parents Stephen Love (voiced by Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi) and Angela Young (Issa Rae). It also highlights how this tight-knit Chicago family juggles careers, marriage, parenthood, social issues and multi-generational dynamics while striving to make a better life for themselves.
‘It’s true that the more specific you are, the more universal the whole project becomes. Obviously, our show is centered on a Black family, but we hope it’s something that people of all ages and backgrounds can see themselves in.’
— Series creator Matthew A. Cherry
Cherry, who has also directed popular live-action shows such as Abbot Elementary, Ghosts and Black-ish and was a production consultant on Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, says the journey of making his new show has been one full of happy accidents.
“I think what started it all was working with Vashti Harrison, who illustrated our original Hair Love book,” he says. “She had done an illustration for a friend of mine, and the hair looked so realistic that we just went from there. Now she has five books on the New York Times Best Sellers list. When I started working with her, we thought, ‘Wow, maybe one day we can have a TV show.’ So early on in the process, we were trying to figure out the right format, and we realized a TV series would make the best sense. We pitched the show a month before the Oscars to take advantage of the short’s momentum, and Max became a great partner from the very beginning.”
A Family Affair
Cherry says one of the advantages of basing a series on the short was they had already done a lot of deep development on the characters and their world. “We knew from the outset that they lived in this brownstone building on the West Side of Chicago,” he notes. “The series happens about two months after the events of the short, so there aren’t too many dramatic changes. We knew their personalities, and the fact that Zuri (voiced by Brooke Monroe Conaway) was a very outspoken six-year old. She’s aged up a bit and is slightly taller from the short.”
Zuri’s dad, Stephen, is a music producer who doesn’t like conflict very much, so he just kind of goes along with everything, explains the show creator. He adds, “Angela is coming out of that health scare that she had in the short. She has a day job at a natural hair salon, and a big arc in the first season is her getting back to herself. She has a renewed sense of purpose, while also wanting to be there for her kid.”
Cherry also mentions that the series format allowed them to include new characters like Angela’s parents, played by Loretta Devine and Harry Lennix. “We were lucky to have these great actors voice them and showcase their great personalities,” he notes. “We get to understand their great dynamic with Zuri, and also explore Stephen’s job as a music producer and Angela’s world with the co-workers at the shop, as well as Zuri’s friends at school.”
The production team put on a nationwide search to find the perfect young girl to voice Zuri. “We were initially debating whether it should be an adult or a real kid voicing the character, because it just feels more organic,” recalls Cherry. “Eventually, it just felt right to have a real kid representing Zuri. We wanted her to be a real kid, so we were very excited when we found Brooke Monroe Conaway, who is from Baltimore and is very grounded. To me, she is one of the best parts of the show, because she’s having these very adult conversations but she still has this very cute quality in her voice. I think both kids and adults can really connect to her scenes, as we were trying hard to make it a great co-viewing experience for the entire family.”
The talented showrunner says he loves working in animation because it’s the first form of filmmaking that kids are oftentimes exposed to. “We have real opportunities to help shape how children see themselves,” he points out. “This wasn’t as apparent when we were kids growing up, right — but hopefully children can see somebody like Zuri who looks like them and acts like them. In general, animation is so universal; you can fall in love with inanimate objects and characters that don’t talk in real life.”
“There’s something about animation that makes diversity feel more universal,” Cherry adds. “It’s true that the more specific you are, the more universal the whole project becomes. Obviously, our show is centered on a Black family, but we hope it’s something that people of all ages and backgrounds can see themselves in. We are also trying to showcase a world that we haven’t seen in animation before, depicting these young millennials trying to reach their dreams in a city, but also trying to be present for their kid as well as dealing with their parents and peers.”
Lighting the Way
The reception of the Hair Love storybook and the short has definitely been a rewarding and eye-opening experience for Cherry. “We were in this really unique position where we had both the short and the book come out around the same time, so it was wonderful to see how it has been used in schools around the country.” he notes. “Often, teachers would show the short film and have the kids read the book as well. Some schools had ‘dress like your favorite character’ days, and you’d see kids dress like Zuri. Seeing that and watching babies on social media watching the short — those were some of the best parts of the whole experience.”
However, Cherry has also witnessed the book being banned in some parts of the country due to the anti-critical race theory laws. “You see this happening to books like Hair Love, which basically exists only to help kids with their own self-confidence, being banned in some places,” he says. “But it’s been great to see people making sure that kids get their hands on the book.”
He adds, “Shorts and series like this are so important because they can showcase empathy for other experiences that are different from our own. I think that’s the really cool part of the show.”
Young Love is produced in partnership with Sony Pictures Animation. It is executive produced by Matthew A. Cherry, Monica A. Young, Karen Rupert Toliver, Carl Jones, David Steward II and Carl Reed, and produced by Karen Malach. The first season is currently streaming on Max.
