How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Mara Brock Akil
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Mara Brock Akil has a love story with Los Angeles that runs deep. She was born in Compton, raised in such neighborhoods as Baldwin Hills, Windsor Hills and Ladera Heights, and now resides in Hancock Park. So when she set out on her latest creative project, a TV adaptation of Judy Blume’s 1975 novel “Forever...,” she knew she had to set it the City of Angels.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
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“We kept saying we’re telling a love story within a love letter to Los Angeles,” said the screenwriter and executive producer best known for the series “Girlfriends” and “Being Mary Jane.”
Akil’s new series, which premiered on Netflix on Thursday, centers on the love story between Justin Edwards and Keisha Clark, Black high school seniors in 2018 Los Angeles. “We’re a very diverse city, but we are still separated within our neighborhoods,” she said. “I want people to get used to seeing Justins and Keishas in L.A. and make room for them as they try to discover each other.”
The showrunner said her “muse” was her eldest son, Yasin Akil, 21, and her relationship with him.
Mara Brock Akil’s Netflix series is a modern-day adaptation of Judy Blume’s coming-of-age novel, featuring a pair of Black leads, Lovie Simone and Michael Cooper Jr., and is set in Los Angeles.
“My impetus to write this, [which] I think [was] the same as Judy,” Akil said, “is I want to make space for my children to have a normal rite of passage to understand who they are, how they make that leap from familial love to their first decision around romantic love and friendship love, and before they move into the next realm of their lives.”
When Akil isn’t on set, her ideal Sunday takes her from her home in Hancock Park to art studios downtown and local bookshops in Ladera Heights. As her work on “Forever” has taught her, “You can stay in your bubble or you can sort of venture out. And if you venture out, I think you’ll be a better Angeleno.”
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
7 a.m.: Hot girl walk
On my dream Sunday, I’m waking up at 7 a.m. when the city is quiet. There are going to be dog walkers, but there’s something so luscious about the stillness of L.A. that early on a Sunday.
I do have a walking and writing creative practice, and so sometimes I like to write in New York as a result of it, because I can just go out the door and walk. But Hancock Park allows me to walk to one of my favorite streets in L.A., which is Larchmont.
There’s something to do where you don’t have to overspend, but you can feel a part of something. You can just enjoy walking up and down. You can stop by the magazine stand. You can look in all the stores. You might buy a croissant — there’s 1,000 bakeries. You can just go look at the adopted pets.
Matcha is my thing. Groundwork has a matcha, Le Pain Quotidien has a matcha and Cookbook has a matcha. And then one of my favorite places, too, is Larchmont Village Wine, Spirits & Cheese. The line is out the door for their sandwiches; I typically get the turkey or the tuna.
I get my Sunday fixings [at the Larchmont Farmers Market], so I make a Sunday chicken. I don’t cook a lot of things, but what I do well, I do very well. I have a family recipe, and it’s a Sunday chicken, and so I get the herbs or the potatoes and the carrots and the things like that.
It feels great to walk out of your door after driving in your car all week, to talk to people, bump into friends.
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9 a.m.: Neighborly tennis lesson
Hancock Park is a really lovely neighborhood. I know my neighbors, and thankfully one of them has a tennis court. I have this amazing trainer named Wkwesi Williams. Wkwesi will meet me over at my neighbor’s house, and he’ll give us a lesson, and then if we’re feeling strong enough, we’ll hit afterwards.
11 a.m.: Hit the batting cages
Then I’m home, and I can be mom. My 16-year-old son, Nasir, is an aspiring baseball player. Typically, if he’s not in a game, which would wipe out my whole Sunday, I just have to get him to the batting cages. My son doesn’t drive yet, so he still needs his mom, thank God.
He bats at BaseballGenerations with Ron Miller, another amazing coach. It’s so funny. It’s the flyest — all the young ballers are in there. Sometimes they’ll have professional guys hitting in the batting cage. It’s like the secret to the secret.
12:30 p.m.: See the art
Then, since we’re downtown, I would go visit Jessica Taylor Bellamy’s studio. Thelma Golden, the director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, who’s a good friend of mine, always gave me this great advice: Art should be a daily practice. If you just have 30 minutes and you can pop into a gallery or a museum, just go see the art, see what it does.
What I love about Bellamy’s work is that she really understands Los Angeles. When I saw her paintings — and she had a palm tree and a pine tree, sometimes she has bright skies, sometimes she has cloudy skies — I was like, “Who is this? She gets it. She’s from here. She knows L.A.”
She was also a muse for “Forever.” When I saw her paintings, I called Michael “Cambio” Fernandez, who is our cinematographer. We talked about her palette, her understanding of the sunny side and the rainy side and the cloudy side of L.A. That tableau was really important.
2 p.m.: Visit childhood home
Because I love driving, [my son and I] take the long way home. I would go by Reparations Club to pick up a book for me. Then we would go to this new comic book store called the Comic Den on Slauson for my son. Then we would go to Simply Wholesome for us.
Simply Wholesome is one of our big heartbeat centers of love, joy, wellness and community. We typically get the Sunshine Shake with the egg, and we get some Jamaican patties for my mom, which we will take literally around the corner. My mother lives in my childhood home, and we would go see grandma, so grandma can see how tall Nasir has grown.
Mara Brock Akil, showrunner of Netflix’s gender-swapped, L.A.-set ‘Forever,’ explains why Blume’s work is as relevant as ever — and attracting Hollywood’s attention.
It always anchors me to walk into a place that you remember yourself. Being in that neighborhood reminds me of how safe and loved and enough I am. I love being in the place where I was a child and also making sure my child stays connected to his grandmother. My own grandmother recently passed in that home, so just honoring that. We always play a little Jhené Aiko or Nipsey Hussle to honor being back over there.
5 p.m.: Sunday fixings
I’ll get back home around 5 o’clock, so I can cook the Sunday chicken. I have a big life, but I’m always a writer and I’m always in practice. And one of my favorite things is music. Our house is always filled with music, so I cook. I slow down. I engage with that family history as well as my own creativity, and in that active meditation, oftentimes I will catch a lot of great ideas. So I always have my journal nearby, maybe a little Champagne because it’s Sunday, and I’m using all of those little fixings I got from the farmers market. And the cool thing is that it takes a minute for the chicken to cook, so I can have a little swim or a little sauna and shower before family dinner.
Mara Brock Akil’s adaptation of the 1975 YA novel follows a pair of Los Angeles teenagers, played by Lovie Simone and Michael Cooper Jr., as they fall in love.
7 p.m.: Family dinner
Right now, it’s just the three of us. Sometimes we FaceTime the older one [who is away at college] and be like, “You’re missing Sunday chicken!” But we sit down, and we just talk about the day, talk about whatever. Sometimes it gets very philosophical. To be in our homes and enjoy them is also a treat, and I don’t ever want to forget that as I’m out and about around the city. We linger at least an hour before we set a new week ahead of us.
9 p.m.: Have a laugh over drinks
But then, I’m also a Gemini, so I like to stay out in them streets. So it might just be calling my girlfriend Alice and being like, “Let’s go have a drink at Damn, I Miss Paris.” Friends of mine, Jason and Adair, just opened that spot up here on West Adams. How long I stay depends on who’s there. Maybe just stay for an hour, have a drink, have a laugh.
11 p.m.: Poetry before bed
I’m a shower girl, but sometimes I also just like to take a bath. So I would just sort of wind down with a bath, and the other thing is reading poetry. Right now I’m reading Nikki Giovanni, Mary Oliver and my mother. My mother just wrote a book of poetry, which blew my mind because my mom has been my mom. And she’s allowed the writer in her to come out. I’ve been reading those three women in conversation with me as I try to write my life poetically. And by the way, poetry is not a whole chapter. Let me get real deep real quick before I go into this REM sleep.
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