Director Nneka Onuorah had never tackled reality TV before. So when executive producers of Lizzo’s competition show Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls reached out with an offer, Onuorah realized she had an opportunity to “revolutionize the genre.”
“So I called it ‘docu-ality’ in my pitch,” Onuorah says. “I told them I want to put the story forward first.”
Watch Out for the Big Grrrls, which premiered back in March on Amazon Prime Video, follows 13 women competing to be dancers for Lizzo’s tour. It’s certainly a departure from Onuorah’s previous documentary work which has focused on the rampant discrimination against Nigeria’s gay community (The Legend of Underground) and how lesbians discriminate against each other (The Same Difference). But her values and ethos—destigmatizing the stories of the marginalized—fall right in line with Lizzo’s own proclamations of self-love and positivity.
Watch Out for the Big Grrrls was a chance for Onuorah to frame her subjects in humanity by placing viewers in the dancers’ shoes to understand what it feels like to move in their bodies.
“They have such an amazing cast of women who were chosen for the show and I felt like their stories were the heartbeat—that was my core focus is to go story first versus format,” Onuorah says. “I wanted it to be visually dynamic. I wanted it to be immersive. I wanted people to feel like they were plopped into the girls bodies.”
Clearly Onuorah’s approach connected with audiences and critics as the show won three Emmys this year including Outstanding Competition Program and Outstanding Directing for a Reality Program—a category where Onuorah was the only Black woman.
“It’s proof that we need to be telling more of our stories and that our voices are needed,” she says.
The Emmy-winning director spoke to Fast Company about working with Lizzo, the importance of storytelling, and her upcoming documentary with Megan Thee Stallion.
What are your thoughts on the current state of reality television? Do you think it’s pushing enough boundaries?
I think that in many ways we are pushing forward narratives that highlight a lot of diversity. I feel like sometimes it’s diversity for just diversity’s sake. Some people like to just check off a box, but they don’t know the nuances of people’s stories. For example, when people talk about LGBTQ stories they only talk about coming out and stories of what happens when your parents don’t love you. But what happens when people thrive with their chosen family and they create love? Or when they find joy or hope? What about plus-sized women who are confident in their dance [skills] and have something they can teach the world? We have this commercialized view of what it means to be othered. But as a person who is of many experiences that are oppressed—being Black, being a woman, being a lesbian—I feel like I bring my own experience and nuance. We had a trans woman on our show and a lot of what Jayla was experiencing, I was able to understand and bring out on the show because there was this masculine and feminine balance that Jayla was trying to find. People had this expectation of what a transwoman was supposed to look like. And Jayla was like, I’m just Jayla. So, it was important for us to highlight that. A lot of people don’t look in further into our stories to see another side.
As you said, a lot of networks and streamers, are checking a box when it comes to diversity. As a filmmaker how do you ensure the nuances of the stories you’re telling aren’t erased?
The part that I focus on as a director is really immersing myself in the person, gaining an understanding of them versus me pushing my agenda on the person. That requires a level of you removing and unbecoming all of the things that the world has told you and staying open. No matter how different anyone looks from me, what culture they’re from, or who I’ve interviewed in the past, I’m focused on immersing myself into their experience. I go in with a question and I’m constantly searching for what the truth is there and that requires a level of openness. In all my work I’m always trying to get to the truth and to the bottom of things so we can find a sense of self-love and be inspired as humans so we can connect more. That’s why so many people enjoyed Big Grrls—you don’t have to be plus sized to connect with it.
How do you pitch these stories to executives?
I feel that I’ve been blessed to be able to help communicate to buyers that nuanced stories are different. A lot of people are looking for what the different thing is. But I have the understanding of both: the deep storytelling that feels authentic and raw, and I have the commercial sensibility to know what’s going to hit big for people to connect to. People assume documentaries are boring. They can be more political. But there’s a way for joy and humor to be a political experience, especially for people who are oppressed or underrepresented. So we have to find ways to flip that on its head so that it becomes an experience that people just enjoy. One of the things I try to evoke in my work is to make it an active experience. In Lizzo’s show. I didn’t let the camera people use tripods. They had to move and experience the girls so that they could fall in love with the experience of what it means to be a plus-sized dancer. When people watch it on a television screen it feels like an active experience.
You’re currently filming the Megan Thee Stallion’s documentary. What are you able to share with us?
I decided to do this project is because she has such a great story to tell. She’s faced a lot of loss in her life. She became a huge star during the time when COVID was happening and we were all in the house. She’s like 27 years old, and I love a coming of age story. I feel for her in all of the loss that she’s had to face and [how she’s] still be able to stand up, feel confident, and tell the story. She’s such a warm and kind person. All the Houston girls are on top right now, Lizzo, Megan, Beyonce—but I also love the feminist aspect deep rooted in Megan’s message. I’m a big fan of Audre Lorde and her feminist theory, and I remember thinking this is the power of the erotic that breaks down womanism and how this world tries to diminish and make you feel small. Your deepest power is in your erotism and I felt like that related to Megan Thee Stallion. And so I was like this is the opportunity to take one woman and tell a lot of women’s stories—and there’s going to be some cool elements that you’ve never seen in a documentary yet.
Your work is slowly expanding to profiling celebrities. What about their point of view do you find interesting?
One thing I love, especially about celebrity documentaries, is I love getting behind the smoke and mirrors and the idea of what everybody is striving for. This is something that all of us have. We’re all human no matter if you’re rich or you don’t have money. There’s obstacles or lessons we all have to learn from one another. And sometimes dismantling the idea of what it means to make it, I think it helps people feel better about themselves because everything in a capitalist society sometimes is meant to make us feel like we always need to strive for something else and we can’t be present. There’s something we’re lacking. That’s how we keep the system going. And so in this case, I really like the idea of opening up and seeing the vulnerability of that. Some documentaries that I don’t like don’t tell the full story of the person and it’s just a fluff piece and I don’t do things like that. I love [cinéma] vérité storytelling. Some of the documentaries that I’ve loved are Paris is Burning and Madonna’s Truth or Dare—it was a beautiful film because it showed her relationship to dancers, dancers’ relationships and being on tour. You know I love fly-on-the-wall storytelling because I do feel like a social scientist. I’m really curious about the culture of people, social culture in general. A lot of my work is just studying the interaction between people and their relationships to themselves.
Now that you’ve worked with Lizzo and now Megan, what or who are you looking to document next?
I got to work with Barack Obama on one of my previous projects that I directed, [The G Word]. I would love to work with someone more political like that in a deeper sense. Same thing with Beyoncé and [Jay Z], just about entrepreneurship and Black wealth. I think that’s super important. Seeing all the experiences that Black people had to have face on that level of wealth or that level of fame is interesting to me because I know there are so many obstacles that they had to go through that they can never talk about. I’m curious about that. I still want to continue to tell some more stories about young people and their families. A lot of people have broken families and that’s been something deep for me because I’ve had some family around my whole life but a lot of the reason I am where I am is because of my chosen family that I made along the way. I’m working on a project with Macro Studios now called Truth Be Told. It’s about the culture of the people of the Black church and it’s humorous. [It’s] kind of like a Michael Moore style documentary, really taking a look at the Black church that tells the truth about what’s behind the idea of perfection for us and what’s broken us apart in the community.
