‘Forever' creator Mara Brock Akil on updating Judy Blume — and finding ‘real intimacy' — in the age of social media
Since its publication in 1975, Judy Blume's young adult novel Forever... has stirred controversy for its frank exploration of teenage sexuality. By the same token, it's been an important touchstone for young readers navigating the thorny terrain of first love. It was an important book for Mara Brock Akil, a TV veteran who has re-interpreted it for Netflix for a new adolescent audience.
"Judy Blume was a first for me as a reader," Akil tells Gold Derby. "I think I became a writer because I was a reader first, and I was immersed in her world." Forever, which explores two teenagers navigating sex and intimacy for the first time, had a particular impact on Akil and her friends because "someone was willing to tell us the truth." Blume's book served as "our modern-day internet" for its young readers, explaining love, dating, and everything that comes with it. So when Blume finally made her work available for adaptation, "my middle-school hand just flew up in the air."
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Yet when Akil saw the list of books Blume was willing to lend out to filmmakers, the producer was dismayed to see Forever wasn't on it. "Judy thought perhaps it was a little past its time," Akil recalls, "that the children today had moved way beyond where the book was." And in a way, Blume is right. "You can find anything and everything on the internet these days," Akil says, "but what's still missing, and maybe missing even more, is deeper connection, real intimacy, honesty." At a time when an abundance of technology has led to "an epidemic of loneliness," Akil thought, "what we need now more than ever is connection and love," and to help "young people navigate that part of the story."
Akil's version of Forever places the story in 2018 Los Angeles, centering it on Black teenagers Keisha Clark (Lovie Simone) and Justin Edwards (Michael Cooper Jr.). Akil mined inspiration not just from her own adolescence, but from raising her own teenage son. From that observation came an understanding that for as much as things change, they stay the same.
"At the end of the day, most love stories are about miscommunication," Akil explains. "It's just about what are the obstacles in that miscommunication." In the case of today, it's cell phone, the internet, and social media. "One minute it can connect you, and the next minute it can devastate you. Whether it be true or not, you feel like your life is on a global stage, that any mistake you make, your life is over." At the same time, "there's ways in which it can bring you together." The phone provides an important connection for Keisha and Justin, who feel out of place at the almost exclusively white public schools their parents have sent them to.
Setting the story in 2018, Akil places it between the murders of Trayvon Martin and George Floyd, which heightened the sense of angst not just for Keisha and Justin, but for their parents as well. The "catastrophic parenting styles" within Keisha and Justin's households stems from a worry about whether "the kid was going to come home or not," Akil explains. That fear, in turn, "is creating unneeded and unnecessary anxiety within their relationship." All of these elements "are the interesting things that help this plot flourish around that very simple premise of miscommunication in a love story, and us rooting for them to finally get on the same page because we see that they're good for each other."
That rooting factor hinges upon casting the right leads, and Akil found them in Simone and Cooper Despite her youth, Simone has a fairly robust resume that includes Greenleaf, Power Book III: Raising Kanan, and Manhunt. "She's been working at her craft as an actress for a long time," Akil says of Simone, who just earned a Gotham nomination for her performance in Forever. Pairing her with Cooper, a relative newcomer who has been "waiting to get in the game," turned out to be "magic." To bring out the best in her young stars, Akil turned to Oscar- and Emmy-winning actress Regina King, who has "given us such layered, beautiful, nuanced characters" throughout her acting career, and could do the same as a director. Having someone with experience both in front of and behind the camera was crucial to helping the stars feel comfortable. That was crucial for the sex scenes, which required "a language that felt honest to the story, and not distracting."
Akil is the creator of such TV hits as Girlfriend, The Game, and Being Mary Jane. She earned her first Emmy nomination in 2024 for producing the documentary Stamped from the Beginning. Although her work has primarily centered on black characters, Akil finds that ultimately, she's just writing about people. "The majority of us wake up every morning not thinking about our race, our gender, our orientation," she states. "We think about how near and far am I to my dreams?" In the case of Forever, Keisha and Justin are "old enough to start thinking about their future as it relates to college," but at the same time are concerned with "who loves me? Who's thinking about me throughout the day?" Those everyday problems "are some of the most dramatic ideas in most people's lives."
Ultimately, Akil believes that "the best way we get to know ourselves, and figure out who we are, is when we can find safe, loving relationships that allow us to carve out more of who we are, and to lead us back to our higher selves." When it comes to Keisha and Justin, "these two young people made a good choice in choosing each other," because it "freed them of themselves to get closer to who they are."
All eight episodes of Forever Season 1 are streaming on Netflix.
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