‘We’re Here’ Queens Come Face to Face with Selma’s Civil Rights History: “It Really Touched Me to My Core”

We’re Here’s cross country caravan of queer excellence continues in “Selma, Alabama,” the fourth episode of Season 2. It feels a bit repetitive to say that this is the most emotional episode of We’re Here to date… but where is the lie? The show keeps outdoing itself in terms of heart offstage and nerve onstage.

It is, however, easy to declare Selma the most historic episode of We’re Here—and not because the episode is packed with a ton of firsts or anything. “Selma” is literally historic in that, in addition to telling the story of the town’s queer present, the episode looks to the past and explains the civil rights turning point that happened at Selma in 1965. And in true We’re Here fashion, the show lets the survivors and heroes of that event tell their story in their own words and in their own city. If any episode of We’re Here sums up the show’s more-than-a-makeover ethos, it has to be this one.

A lot of thought and a lot of heart went into making this week’s episode of We’re Here. Allow the minds behind this moving—and also highly entertaining!—hour of television explain to you how they made history happen.

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Every episode of We’re Here starts with a city—or, rather, the search for a city.

Jeffrey Marx (lead casting producer): My associate producer Jay S. Nachenberg was doing a couple of weeks of light research before we officially started and he was like, “Where do you think we should go to find a small town for all three of the stories to be Black?” We wanted to highlight Black Lives Matter, Trans Black Lives Matter—we want to highlight all those things. And he was like, “Would it be too expected to go to Selma, Alabama?” I took a moment and I considered and I thought, and I said, “No, I don’t think it would be too expected. I feel like maybe we should definitely explore it.”

After selecting Selma, the casting team had to find the right stories for the episode while dealing with Selma’s less-than-stellar WiFi. With Zoom calls ruled out, the casting team had to conduct interviews via the phone and in person.

Marx: AkeeLah really is, to me, the cornerstone of the Selma experience. She talks about it very, very emotionally, very impactfully. At the [casting] interview initially was her and her father. They were living together and we interviewed them at their house. It was the first time, I think, she had been in a room without her dad for a while. He was outside and she was sitting in her living room and we were filming with me and another associate producer. And before we even got started with the interview, she broke down crying and saying, “I can’t believe someone’s here to listen to me. No one listens to me and it feels weird that people are listening to me.” And as she goes, “I know you guys are strangers, but I already feel closer to telling you my story than my own father in my house.”

With the drag kids of Selma ready to get to werk, the We’re Here team traveled to Alabama and got to work.

Stephen Warren (co-creator, executive producer): Selma, I think, was a shock to all of our systems, because we had no idea that the town was going to be as depressed and in a state of general disrepair. There are rays of hope. There’s art stores, there are art cooperatives that are in studios that are starting to spring up.

Marx: I have never been to a place that you just felt the history, you felt the spirit, you felt what happened there. There’s definitely a radius of energy that is just very solemn and very respected. To walk by that bridge is a feeling I’ll remember forever.

Warren: We entered the town right at the moment that a hotel that was renovated had just reopened, so we took over the entire hotel. There was a bond amongst our cast and crew that existed there, and we knew we were doing something special, telling stories that needed to be told. That was a seminal moment for the show that thrust us ahead.

As with previous Season 2 episodes, we got to see the drag kids interact during the rehearsal and makeover process. 

Bob the Drag Queen (talent, series producer): When you think about Selma, Alabama, me and Shangela’s drag kids grew up together so we didn’t have to do any amount of anything. They knew each other because of their communities, but also these are small communities—and it’s a small community within a small community. So the folks are like, “Oh, I know her, I know him, I know them.” So for people who don’t feel particularly included, it feels nice to be able to give them an opportunity to join the community they feel ostracized from for whatever reason.

In addition to community, the Selma episode focused on intersectionality and vulnerability. 

Johnnie Ingram (co-creator, executive producer): That intersectionality that Bob talks about, how much stronger we are together—we need people to understand that. I think of AkeeLah’s story specifically and how dangerous it is to be a Black trans woman, to exist in the world, that [story] needs to be told. Having the Black Trans Lives Matter movement and really understanding what that means, even within our own community, I think is really important.

Shangela (talent, series producer): The episode got the real reaction, because it is shocking to me. Selma was a very interesting and very moving and emotional episode for me. When we first meet Joseph, he is very guarded in a way—and why wouldn’t you be? You’ve been shot for being who you are and shot by someone that you love. So he has all of these walls up, even for himself and in owning all the parts of who he is and living his life out loud and proud outside of the four walls of his home. So that whole kind of DL culture, we to address it in this episode. Hopefully it’ll shed light and encourage people to be proud of who they are and to have ownership of who they are—to not be afraid to share who they are. Sometimes there can be very, very hard and negative consequences of not choosing to live a life where you own and respect the gift of being a queer person.

The most emotional scene of the episode, season, and perhaps series occurred when Bob, Shangela, and Eureka visited the By the River Center for Humanity in Selma and met with surviving Foot Soldiers, civil rights activists who crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday in 1965.

Bob: We met Afriye [We-kandodis] who runs the culture center in Selma, and she introduced us to the Foot Soldiers—particularly Ms. [Lynda Blackmon] Lowery, who I still stay in contact with, actually. Ms. Lowery was sharing with us her experience on the [Edmund Pettus] Bridge. What she didn’t say was, maybe like a year or so ahead beforehand, she was doing an interview with someone and then they showed never-before-seen footage from Bloody Sunday. And she saw a little girl, a teenage girl, getting beat up by the cops and running into a cloud of tear gas. She had never seen this footage and it was her. She had never seen this footage of herself being brutalized by police officers. It really touched me to my core. There was a lot of feelings that I had about being, you know, basically sad that she had to go through that, but also grateful that I’m able to experience a world where those actions have positively affected me and the people around me. And I just started crying because it was so true for me that everything that she went through and has endured and is still enduring on a day to day basis—I’m really grateful for it. I’m really sad that had to happen.

The show’s director and crew take great care to present these genuine moments of emotion with respect and authenticity. 

Peter LoGreco (director): To the degree that it all feels very off-the-cuff, there’s also a lot of discussion ahead of time of the underlying intention for pretty much every scene that’s shot. You usually have a pretty rigorous back and forth with the producers, and sometimes with the camera people too, in terms of what we’re after. With the exception of the openings and the drag set pieces, we never want it to feel overly constructed.

Selma’s drag show offered a range of content, from show-stopping dance numbers to an emotional number from Eureka! and her drag daughter Deborah, performed in tribute to Deborah’s late granddaughter Ke’Aira.

Eureka! (talent, series producer): It’s important to understand that there’s a lot of elements to drag performances. There are emotional performances, there’s balance, there’s this connection with acting when it comes to drag and pantomime. There’s a lot of acting, sometimes with lip synching, and there’s moments that can be very powerful. [There’s the] beauty of bringing people together, so that’s what we really wanted to channel what that performance. There’s too much hurt and too much pain to just serve, you know? Of course they were beautiful and they were serving the looks, but they were also serving drama, which is sometimes necessary.

Bob’s upbeat number gave her the opportunity to pull a stunt that she’s waited forever to pull: her giant wig falls to the floor—and then comes to life and shows out. The role of Bob’s Wig was played by someone special to Bob.

Bob: Yeah, that’s my niece Nevaeh! That’s my brother’s daughter. That’s Martha’s grandkid. I’ve had this idea for a long time where I’m doing a performance where my wig falls off and then the wig comes to life and we start dancing together. I’ve always wanted to do that and I was like, “You know, I think now’s the time to bring out my niece who’s a gymnast and a cheerleader. She’s a really, really good performer. Actually, she’s a great dancer. She can do backflips and stuff. And she actually also had a cast on her arm during the performance but you couldn’t see it because it was covered in hair. Wasn’t she the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?

We’re Here airs on HBO on Mondays at 9 p.m. ET

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