In ‘Diarra from Detroit,’ Diarra Kilpatrick sets a whodunit in her hometown : NPR

Diarra Kilpatrick stars as a teacher turned mystery solver in Diarra from Detroit.

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Diarra Kilpatrick stars as a teacher turned mystery solver in Diarra from Detroit.

PARI Network

Detroit native Diarra Kilpatrick always wanted to share his vision of the city with the world: “For me, the gems of Detroit far outweighed some of the more difficult aspects of growing up there,” the actor says, screenwriter and producer.

Kilpatrick’s new BET+ series, Diarra from Detroit, is inspired, in part, by the time she spent as a little girl watching Columbo And Perry Mason with her grandmother. Kilpatrick notes that despite the fact that all the women in her life seemed obsessed with murder mystery shows at the time, she never saw black women driving the narrative.

Detroit Diarra is a dark comedy about a public school teacher going through a divorce who decides to enter the dating scene. When a man she meets on Tinder ghosts her, Diarra sets out to find out why – and finds herself embroiled in a decades-old mystery.

Kilpatrick says she was initially reluctant to use her own first name in the series title because she feared that audiences would assume she was simply being herself instead of playing a character. But as the series progressed through development, the decision started to seem like a good one.

“It felt like it was an announcement,” Kilpatrick says. “Almost, like, ‘Diarra from Detroit is ready to be seen!’ ”

In addition to working on the latter series, Kilpatrick is an actor, writer and producer who created and starred in the ABC digital original satirical comedy. American Koko, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award. She also starred for three seasons on the HBO period drama. Perry Mason.

Interview Highlights

On his tendency to joke about dark things

My father, the only way to describe him is just a damn fool. He can’t take anything seriously. They say that comedy is tragedy plus time. He doesn’t need time. It’s just… a funeral, a joke. Someone is hurt, joke. It’s never too early, joke. So he just doesn’t have the ability to take anything seriously. And I think my mother took everything very seriously and had an immense depth of feeling and thoughts and everything. And so I think making sense of those two personalities in me has kind of been my lot. And I think that providing a sense of comedy and depth is probably one of the hallmarks of my work.

At the casting Detroit Diarra listening to the voices of the actors

It’s in the voice. I could do auditions on the computer and walk away from the computer to have a cup of tea or something, and the voice would bring me back. We don’t really do fry in the Midwest. We don’t really promote in the Midwest. Detroit is for me a southern city, in the north. And so it’s that bit of southern in the voice, it’s that bit of bass in the voice. Confidence in the voice. I could tell right away.

On learning to drop your Detroit accent in acting school, then using it to get roles afterward

I went to drama school too, and they beat me up pretty bad when I got there. … They were like, ‘Ma’am, what’s that accent you have? Your vowels are all over the place. You look like a hot mess.’ …As much as I loved being at Tisch and that lineup, I didn’t like the kind of judgment I felt about my accent and being the only black girl in the studio. It was like, “We have to fix this!” Because as soon as you graduate, no one expects you to speak the king’s English. As a dark-skinned black actress in her twenties, they want your regional dialect. Very often you go out for Prostitute #4. They don’t need you to look like you’re performing in a Shakespearean play. So it was interesting to lose it and then learn how to find it again, because that’s what the industry demanded of me. And I wish it had been phrased that way for me at school. There’s nothing wrong with your accent. In fact, you’ll probably work more with and without your regional dialect.

Seeing the beauty of his childhood in Detroit

I grew up in the city. When I was very young, we didn’t have a lot of money. My mother and I lived in section 8. We lived in Calumet townhouses right off the Lodge Freeway. …I had a very idyllic childhood. I have a very strong sense of what it was like to grow up in this Section 8 housing community. And I think part of it was my imagination.

It’s not there anymore, but there used to be, right across the street from where I grew up, this big field. It was an empty field, and I walked across that field to the corner store every time my mother gave me a few dollars to go buy ice cream or something. And this area, in my imagination, in my mind, honestly looked like Maria von Trapp, like The sound of music, like the Austrian panoramas and mountains. The grass was so tall. I would go to this field and pick flowers for my mother. I was singing and dancing and getting lost in it. And it wasn’t until I was much older that I said to myself, “It was an empty lot. The grass was very tall because it should have been cut. They were dandelions. They weren’t are not flowers.” There was a church bell ringing. I always thought it was magical, because I guess it was just the love I felt. And it’s just something about me.

So I realize that not everyone has that view on this. I am able to see the beauty in it. I am also able to recognize that there are challenges and that certain things need to be fixed. So I feel like I can make room for both.

On the “angry black woman” stereotype

It’s a trap. They made us afraid of our anger. …But ultimately, anger is so beautiful and powerful to me. Nothing changes unless someone gets angry. Obviously, you don’t want to just spread uncontrollable anger everywhere. Nor will it be constructive. But there is great information in your anger. There is great direction in your anger. And, of course, there’s a big change that comes from someone saying to themselves, “I’m angry as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.” … I think when black women are afraid of it, it siphons off some of your power and your intuition and your drive.

Seeing a mural for the show in Detroit

I was lucky enough to go to Detroit with my husband, my baby, my sister, and my oldest friend in the world, and we stayed there and took pictures. And it was a beautiful moment. …I was trying to figure out how to take a brick wall on the plane with me? But it was really a beautiful moment. And I have to thank Sydney James, who was a wonderful muralist in Detroit, who created it with her team. And I just try to keep my head down and do my job. I will try to listen to my mission, follow it and obey it. But there are those moments that shake you, like, “Girl, you’re doing it. You’re doing it! Your face is all over this wall!” It’s crazy. And it was a really touching and lovely moment.

Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the Web.