A key writer on HBO’s new superhero series “Lanterns” has revealed she spent roughly a decade working as a left-wing community organizer for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and civil rights attorney Ben Crump before returning to entertainment writing.
Vanessa Baden Kelly, who wrote for the DC Comics adaptation, discussed her background during an appearance on the New Rockstars podcast with hosts Erik Voss and Jessica Clemons. Baden Kelly started as a child actress, appearing on Nick Jr.’s “Gullah Gullah Island” and later playing “Kyra Rockmore” on “Keenan & Kel.” After 2000, she stepped away from acting for about ten years to work in political organizing before returning to seek both acting and writing work around 2011.
Baden Kelly said her acting opportunities dried up as diversity in casting stalled out around 2000.
“I was working for Karen Bass while still trying to audition, but nothing was really moving because we had slipped backwards in the diversity revolution. And so I started to write,” Baden Kelly said.
She also described writing a scene in “Lanterns” in which a human character explains racism to an alien, saying the character has an excuse for the lecture because “it’s 1986 and this lady knows nothing about nothing.” A podcast host noted that the timeline places the scene before the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, and Baden Kelly agreed with that observation.
Backlash Over Episode Three
The series has drawn criticism from some viewers over its third episode, which features a lengthy lecture on “white privilege” delivered by the mother of John Stewart, one of the show’s Green Lantern characters. In that storyline, the mother is depicted pushing her son toward the role for decades.
J. Alphonse Nicholson, who plays John Stewart’s father, addressed the storyline on a separate podcast appearance, saying the series explores how the world might look different if people extended more trust to Black women — comparing his on-screen wife to former Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Lanterns” is based on DC Comics’ Green Lantern Corps, a multi-species intergalactic police force. The series is produced by James Gunn and run by Damon Lindelof, the “Lost” co-creator who previously wrote a sequel series to Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” that similarly centered on racial themes.
