Diarra Kilpatrick recalled when she wrote the screenplay for NBC's Debra Messing procedural “The Mystery of Laura” and received feedback from the network that they wanted Messing's character, an NYPD homicide detective, to date. .
“The network was like, 'Do people hate her?'” There's still a criminal at large. ” And I remember thinking, “I don’t know. She has to have something for herself,” Kilpatrick said recently on Zoom.
A date is at the center of “Dear From Detroit,” a new comedy-mystery series that Kilpatrick created, executive produced and stars in for BET+.
Kilpatrick (Perry Mason) plays a schoolteacher (also played by Diarra) who returns to his childhood home after going through a divorce. She meets a man on her dating app, Tinder, and they spend the night together. When she does not hear from Diara again, her friends say she has become a ghost, but she concludes that something must be wrong and begins investigating her. This amateur detective leads Diara into dangerous situations.
Kilpatrick said that ghosting is “something that happens to all my girlfriends. They talk about it very casually. They're like, 'I was talking to this guy and he ghosted me.' So I was talking to the guy and then I ended up ghosting him. ” It’s a very prolific act. What it says about our society, I feel like no one is really telling the truth, we just don't communicate with each other anymore. ”
Kenya Barris, creator of hit shows like “Black-ish” and “Grown-ish,” also serves as an executive producer on the series. Mr. Barris is a partner in his BET studio, and “Dear Me From Detroit” is his first scripted series.
Kilpatrick recalls that when she first met Barris at the 2017 NAACP Awards, Barris told her that he had read her script.
“That was a huge moment for me, because I thought, 'How on earth did they have time to read my script?'” Kilpatrick recalls. “It took years for it to turn into something, but it was like the 'how' of Black Hollywood turned into something amazing.”
Like her TV character, Kilpatrick is also from Detroit, and her last name is well known. Ms. Kilpatrick's father is Bernard Kilpatrick, and her half-brother is Kwame Kilpatrick, the honorable former mayor who was convicted in 2013 on corruption charges. He served more than seven years of a 28-year sentence and was pardoned by President Trump in 2021. The elder Fitzpatrick, who was involved in political activities including her son's mayoral campaign and former Gov. Jennifer Granholm's 2002 campaign, was also convicted in 2013. He received a 10-month prison sentence for tax evasion.
Kilpatrick said she understands that with all the attention now, questions will arise about her family.
“I'm ready for that,” she said. “We know that in order to make our voices louder, we also need to make our faces louder. And that's going to come to this region.”
Kilpatrick credits the time he spent with his father as a child helping him learn about Detroit's different neighborhoods and develop an appreciation for the people who live there.
“I'm from all over Detroit because on the weekends, my dad would be campaigning or something, and I'd be with him in the campaign office or campaigning or doing paperwork in the neighborhood. ”, inviting people to vote for this or that person. So I've seen a lot of this city and had a really warm perspective about it. ”