'Harlem' star says show expands the vision of what's possible for Black queer women

Johnson plays Tye, a successful, queer dating app creator who prefers keeping vulnerability at arm’s length, causing her to date women who might not always match up with her intellectually.

“I think there is something to be said about being a Black person/being a Black woman/being a Black queer woman in any male-dominated field — especially a white, male-dominated field — where you have to kind of shed away layers of yourself in order to get the job done,” Johnson told NBC News.

“Usually, in life, when people are very headstrong about something and they’re ignoring other things, it comes out in health,” Johnson added.

There is no such thing as a Black queer woman who owns a tech company in America right now, so that is a new thing that we’re seeing,” she said about the show.

As a Black queer woman, Johnson said, she has always seen the world through a variety of lenses and intimately knows what it feels like to not be seen and represented in mainstream entertainment. .

“Tye is expanding people’s visions of what is possible for a Black queer woman, and that’s the kind of characters that I want to play.”.

“I always felt a part of the process; I never felt like somebody’s making me do something or I don’t have a voice in what’s happening,” she said.

In what she can best describe as “love at first sight,” Johnson said she felt an instant kinship with her three co-leads — Meagan Good, Grace Byers and Shoniqua Shandai — because “these women feel like people I know in my life

And while “ego and a little bit of insecurity can get in the way” in a competitive business that is used to pitting Black women against one another for a limited number of coveted roles, Johnson “never felt that with any of these women,” no matter how long their resumes were. 

Throughout the process of shooting the 10-episode first season, the four women worked closely with Oliver, who serves as the creator and showrunner, as well as the other writers and producers to ensure that certain lines were not “inauthentic to us as people or triggering to Black women,” Johnson said

“As a Black woman, watching Black women on TV — especially when the people behind the scenes aren’t Black women — can be a little triggering or jarring, because it feels like this isn’t a true reflection of my life or the life of many Black women that I know, and I can tell by just how one-dimensional this is that it wasn’t a Black woman who wrote this,” she added