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[This story contains spoilers from the series finale of The Chi, “The Last Dance.”]
Social media is still processing The Chi finale. For the most part, the feedback has been consistently good. Who can argue with an ending where Emmett and Kiesha, whom we first met hooking up as teenagers (with Kiesha getting caught under the bed by Emmett’s mama Jada), have a beautiful wedding in the backyard of the home Jada shared with Emmett’s father Darnell?
“It’s been surreal. I’m just watching it every week, watching how the fans have so much emotional connection to the show,” Jacob Latimore, who was 19 when he started playing Emmett and is turning 30 in August, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “The last day of filming was a big emotional day for all of us. The tears are still going as we watch it with the fans, and I think the fans are even feeling the goodbye, too.”
Birgundi Baker, who plays Kiesha, understands how people feel like they’ve grown up with their charachters. “I get people all the time [saying], ‘I watched you grow up on TV!’ That’s really the experience we’ve had with Emmett and Kiesha,” she tells THR. “They went from a boy and a girl to a woman and a man. They are parents, they have businesses and real feelings. We’ve watched their whole life unfold and come together, and unfold again so many times. We’ve watched their whole life happen on this show.”
The Chi took Emmett and Kiesha from stereotypes — with Emmett having children with four women, including two best friends, Kiesha and his ex-wife Tiff (Hannaha Hall) — and Kiesha having two kids with two different fathers in Nuck and Emmett to actual people. “We definitely shined that light on people who feel like they’ve been a little voiceless,” says Latimore. “To show those seeds and that vulnerability, which is why the main characters are so relatable.
“I love that we can be the symbol of love,” adds Baker, who is happy with the finale overall. “It brought everything full circle for me. Were paying homage to where we began. We started with Kevin (Alex Hibbert) and the boys [Jake (Michael V. Epps) and Papa (Shamon Brown)], so to end with him being there reminded me of where we came from, how far we’ve come, and that theme of love.”
But as much as viewers agree on Emmett and Kiesha’s perfect ending, there are still lingering questions after the series finale of the Paramount+ show, which concluded this weekend after eight seasons. So The Hollywood Reporter went right to the source — creator Lena Waithe — to get answers. Read our chat on finale burning questions, below.
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Lena, let’s jump into the wedding. When I was waiting for Kiesha to walk down the aisle, I kept saying, “Kevin better show up. She is not about to walk down this aisle by herself. Where is Kevin?“
That reveal is one of my favorites. He’s next to Bakari being alive. There’s a lot of good in the ending: Her mom surprising her; it feels like a real wedding. We waited so long for this wedding. The audience has earned it from the opening episode. If somebody goes back and watches that pilot and then watches that last episode, we couldn’t be more proud in terms of what has happened over these eight seasons.
I feel like Robert Townsend directing the fifth episode really set the series finale in motion. To have this Chicago legend direct the episode where Emmett and Kiesha finally get engaged and take their love to a traditional place, especially considering how they began and their various entanglements, is great in showing that Black people do get married. It’s also such a Chicago proposal. But then to have Nuck (Cortez Smith) killed in the same episode, also with Robert Townsend behind the lens for that…
Robert Townsend expressed to me that he was a fan of the show, which is already like, “Okay, I can go now, take me.” (Laughs.) When I asked him if he would be willing to direct, he jumped at the chance. Episode five is a very important episode in the 10-episode season. We knew it was going to be these two things coming together — Tiff killing Nuck, and Emmett and Kiesha getting engaged. He was the perfect person, and the cast was just beside themselves. I wasn’t on set. I just kind of let them do what they do.
But being at the table read was magical. He makes you raise your game. When Jordan walks onto this court, you make sure that you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. Me and Robert worked on that scene on the page; very few directors get those opportunities to do that with me. And it was a little longer [than we anticipated], but we understood that this [proposal] was going to be like a how-to guide for people.
Yes.
So I understand the weight of it and. Knowing that it still needs levity, that’s what Robert’s so great about. He was like, “I know this is important.” One thing I’m grateful for [also in that episode is the sex talk between Emmett and his son Devante (Anthony B. Jenkins)]. I got to do a lot of things and put work into the world, but the fact that you see a young Black man talk to his son and use the word “partner” when he’s talking to him? For the little boy to say, “Why do you keep saying that? Why don’t you say, ‘girl’?” and [his father] says, “I don’t want to assume that you like girls.” And [the little boy] says, “Well, I do, Dad. I’m not gay,” and he says, “Okay, I just want you to know, it would be okay if you were.”
For people to be sitting at home and to see a father say that to his son… I hope that somebody walks away and goes, “Let me not assume that my child is straight.” And that’s beyond color lines.
Can you talk about the decision to have Barton Fitzpatrick’s Reg, another day-one The Chi cast member, redeem himself in such an unexpected yet so believable way, especially considering the terror he’s been through since he returned almost literally from the dead?
That’s what we wanted. The fact that you use those two words — unexpected and believable — that was what we were going for. I think the audience wanted us to kill him. And I just couldn’t do that with that character. I tell people that we kill a lot of people in The Chi, but with Reg, I think he represents that lost boy who thinks he needs to be tough to survive. You do have to be tough, especially in Chicago. But you get to see a softer side of him.
The thing about him is that he is tough and he can handle himself in that situation. He knows that his brothers aren’t as tough as he is, and I think he gets frustrated by that sometimes. Particularly with his little brother, he’s like, “Why are you not like me?”
I think Jake really represents love; I love Mikey Epps so much. He is like that. He’s such a cool kid and chill, and he’s from Chicago. I think we have to look at ourselves [and] we got to let him be himself. He’s not like us …. we got to be like “your generation is different,” and I think that’s what Reg is trying to let go of— the expectation that you’re not going to do things exactly how I’m doing things. And maybe that’s right. I hope people see that love between the two of them, but also see that distance between the two of them because they’re from different generations.
He redeems himself, but he’s also being held accountable for his actions. That’s the important part.
Absolutely, I’m always about that.
So why was Kiesha so upset that Nuck was killed. Where was her sympathy for Tiff and the fact that Nuck knew he killed Rob, the father of her child, but was with her like they could one day be married?
That conversation is happening online. It happened in our writers room beforehand. I think where I landed with it, because I know the buck always stops with me, is that the thing for Kiesha was that she thought the father of her child was someone else. She still wanted to keep the child and raise the child and love the child, but, when she realized that the child was actually by someone that she once loved, and maybe might have been in a toxic relationship with, but he was sort of back and around in the world, I think it made her feel like, “Oh, I have a relationship with the father of this child, and this child has a father now, and also Emmett.”
We were always very clear that Emmett is very much a father figure to Ronnie, but she wanted Ronnie to have a relationship with his [biological] father. Also, she has a very complicated relationship with her father who died suddenly, which is taken from my own story. My father died suddenly when I was 14; he was killed. So I knew I wanted to do that to show what it was like for a Black daughter to mourn her father in a very particular way, because my sister and I went through that.
But I think for her to have her son have to experience that as well, it triggered something. I don’t know if people picked up on that parallel. I think she’s more upset that Tiff would do this to her son more than to her. I think it’s more about “my son is having the same experience that I had, and he’s so young.” And that’s why she was frustrated with Tiff. But I think she understands [and gets] also that Tiff was very impulsive, as one would be. We [in the writers room] were like, “It’s got to be Tiff [who kills Nuck] and Tiff [had to] be like, “Oh, I don’t need no conversation. I’m not Alicia.”
Let’s talk about bringing in Yolonda Ross to play Jada, who passed away last season in that dream sequence with Emmett to find the wedding location. I’m from Chicago and my family has deep Mississippi roots, and Jada coming to her son Emmett in a dream felt so Southern.
My grandmother’s from Arkansas. She moved to Chicago when she was 17 and I was raised in her house. She’s very much a big part of raising me. And we hear that about people coming to visit you in your dreams when they’ve made their transition. We knew that we were going to do that. We knew Yolonda was directing episode [three], but we were like, “Would you also come back for this? And she was like, “I love that idea.”
And also her having a presence at the wedding, which we do traditionally in Black families. You have the altars. But we knew that when Darnell says, “She visits me all the time” that that’s how Emmett’s psyche works [and he’d wonder why Jada didn’t visit him]. I think sometimes with [deceased] parents, they come when you need them. We knew we wanted to plan it early and when it happened, we all loved watching it. Some people in our cast have lost their moms, so there was a real sensitivity around it. I think you can feel it. I think there’s a lot of the love in it because we have had a lot of people in the show who have had that experience. We wanted to make sure we got it right.
And then, of course, there’s Darnell being able to love Jada and still be with a new woman in Riley. And Riley, who also lost her husband, being able to accept being with Darnell, but also fighting a ghost for his full attention.
Only Wendy Raquel Robinson could come in and be likable as [Riley]. We had to cast somebody who you can’t not love, because we’re like, “They are going to eat up whoever we put in here.” I’ve always loved her. I loved her from The Steve Harvey Show. When I called her to ask if she would come and do the show, she was so beside herself. I was more nervous. She was like “Yes, please, and oh, thank you for thinking of me.”
She has been such a wonderful addition to the show, and it does represent for some of us who have parents who’ve lost somebody that your parents are sometimes moving on, and it’s a very crazy thing. We were really excited to show what that is, and we showed Emmett being a little bit frustrated, as one would be because that’s something that happens in families. We wanted to have her blend into this world, which she does so seamlessly. She’s so great, and there’s a familiarity about Wendy. People feel like they already know her. Even though it’s a new character. We love that she was a grief counselor and she had lost her husband. Sometimes people close to it can understand that experience.
Rashaad getting Darnell and Jada’s house is another big moment.
I saw a reviewer say, “Why didn’t Darnell give that house to one of his many kids?’ And I’m like, “Guys, I’m all about ‘blood doesn’t mean entitlement.’ I’m really trying to encourage us to understand that family just means showing up and being in a community and being like-minded. If there’s any legacy I can leave behind for us, it’s that. We get very big on family. I understand that completely. My grandmother raised me that way. But now as I try to figure out how I want my life to look, a lot of my community is made up of people who aren’t blood, and I’m closer to them than I am some family members. I love the Rashaad and Darnell thing because they have a bit of a vibe. They are a certain kind of guy, and I love that Darnell’s like, “I want you to begin again in this house.”
And for Rashaad, because he needed a place where he could be comfortable.
That was something that also came up in the writers room, Because I grew up in a three-generation household, and I loved the idea of Darnell being in the same house as his grandkids with Emmett and Kiesha. It wasn’t weird for us. It was my grandmother, my mom, my sister, and myself.
And finally, I thought for sure that Roselyn Perry, Kandi Burruss’s character, was going to die. She was the one who really killed Alicia (Lynn Whitfield) and then she gave Reg the order to kill Shaad’s ex Nora (Tammy Townsend).
I’ll just give you the real-deal answer. Kandi had always wanted to come and do it. But she was doing Broadway and was always busy. Me and Kandi are birthday twins. It’s the weirdest thing ever. But we always say “happy birthday” to each other. We send so much love. We are in communication a lot. And she was like, “What are the dates? What’s going on?” I was just like, “I think it’s going to be too hard. I don’t want to mess you up in terms of what you’re trying to do with & Juliet.”
But she still was a presence in there. People were expecting to see her, but people don’t understand what it’s like with a cast this big. People are busy and things are happening in folks’ lives. We got Hannibal (Chris Lee) back in there real quick. We got a lot of people. It’s a lot of calls and texts. Kandi was in New York doing her thing. It’s tough, but really I want people to know that these actors are people who have opportunities, and if they can make it, they will. And if they can’t, they’re always heartbroken about it.
But I’m glad that we mentioned Roselyn so she’s there in spirit in that last season.Kandi came and she killed Alicia and was out. Then she got Nora killed for going back on her deal for the money she gave her. So sometimes that’s how it be. Because there were some people who were wondering if I was going to make a cameo in the last season, and I was like, “No. It didn’t feel necessary.” I do my little thing. You’ll hear me in the “Previously on The Chi” [voiceover]. That felt like it was enough. I just always trust the higher power. I trust what God wanted to happen is what happened, and I’m glad it all happened exactly the way it did.
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All eight seasons of The Chi are streaming through the Paramount+ with Showtime plan. Read THR‘s full finale postmortem with Lena Waithe.
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