So how did you go about doing that?

The only thing I could think of to not rehash it was to go with their children. I kept thinking about Marcus and Angela as they walk into the sunset at the end of the movie to that great [Babyface and] Toni Braxton song, “Give You My Heart,” and I was like “What happens to them?” They get married, have a kid, live the American Dream so to speak. And then I was like, “Who was that kid? Who does that kid grow up to be?”

I started to go deeper into what it means to be young and black and all that goes with that. And I also thought of Jacqueline’s kid, but we don’t know who the father is because she was a rolling stone. The thing about those characters, Jacqueline and Angela but specifically Marcus, is that all the things that make them iconic also make them not such great parents. Marcus Graham is a narcissist. Jacqueline was kind of crazy. Angela was this girl chasing rainbows.

Rather than idolize the characters, why not look at them through a realistic lens, so to speak? Then I realized my characters would be 26 years old — that’s how long ago the movie came out. You are kind of distancing yourself from your parents at 26 and trying to figure out who you are, and also rejecting everything that your parents told you that you are, that you would be. But by the time you get to the second episode, you also realize that these are just young black people trying to figure out their lives, which is really what we wanted to go for. So even if you’ve never seen the movie, you can appreciate the show and see the subtle nuances through which we pay tribute to the original. But we are also trying to create our own lane.