Vince Staples offered insight into how The Vince Staples Show came together and how he convinced Netflix to back his creative vision.
During his chat on the After Hours podcast, Vince and his manager Corey Smyth explained how they managed to get the concept for the hit Netflix show moving forward and secure the streaming giant’s support for the rapper’s idea. According to Smyth, he was “widely surprised” by Vince’s talent for adapting to script drafts and elevating character development to new heights.
He also mentioned that one key goal was getting networks to provide honest feedback. Since he and Vince operate in a “brutally honest” space, they believed networks should match that energy. At the 5:29 mark, Vince added, “People like to undermine the intelligence of the audience,” noting how this becomes learned behavior that pushes things in a particular direction, but simple conversations can address that problem.
“I feel like a lot of the time we just have to have conversation,” said Staples. “The way the show was written and this was always the intention, The Vince Stapes Show is not about Vince Staples as a character. It’s about a perspective. It’s The Vince Staples Show because I made it not because it’s about me. I think that was a hard thing for a lot of people to grasp.”
He added, “Going from writing for me and then writing for the characters it became […] kind of a disconnect but it became weird for them because they’re expecting me to come in and write a show about myself but I’m writing a show about other people and how they view me in the world and that’s when it became ‘What is Vince going to do?’ […] but it just becomes conversation.”
Vince mentioned that people assumed he’d watched shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm, which his show was often compared to. But he admitted he hadn’t seen it, which led Netflix to ask what he was actually aiming for with his own show.
“That would kind of throw people for a loop, so then it would get shaky, ‘What are we doing?,'” said Vince. “Especially when you’re dealing with a big company with a lot of finances and a lot of things on their slate it’s not wrong to answer those questions for them. I think that’s the place a lot of creative people have to get to.”
He continued, “Of course, I’m going to ask what you’re doing if I don’t know what you’re doing. But sometimes that hurts people, so we just wanted to make sure that we were communicating and letting people know the real influences, the real identity of the show, and the way I wanted it to be.”
