We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Felicia Pride a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Felicia, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

I moved to Los Angeles at the age of 35 to pursue my dreams of writing for the screen. I did have a previous career as a journalist and author prior, but I had stopped writing for a long time.

So the move was also to reignite my creative practice. And while I wasn’t a spring chicken in an industry that favors youth, I know that my timing was divine.

I was able to lean on my life experience. I had a strong enough sense of self to help me navigate Hollywood’s weird terrain. I had some wisdom and stories that added to the value I was able to bring.

But reigniting my creative practice at thirty-five after not writing for several years was one of the hardest things I had to do. It required me to rekindle my relationship with the work, to heal some of the trauma I was carrying, to recommit to my art. To make a creative comeback.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a TV+ film writer and an award-winning filmmaker. I’ve written on Ava DuVernay’s QUEEN SUGAR, GREY’S ANATOMY, and am currently a writer / supervising producer on BEL-AIR.

I’m also developing shows with Amazon and Netflix. In film, I wrote and executive produced REALLY LOVE, which debuted on Netflix, and I’ve sold features to Universal and Sony.

I started directing about four years ago with my first short, tender, which aired on STARZ, and I am currently on the festival circuit with LOOK BACK AT IT, a proof of concept for my feature directorial debut by the same name. Our short won the audience award at the BlackStar Film Festival and was nominated for an Humanitas Prize for screenwriting.

I founded and run HONEY CHILE, an independent media + production company, run by Black women, that develops, creates, and produces content by, for, or about Black women 40+ across TV, film, audio, digital, books, and events. I am also the co-host of our NAACP-nominated podcast Chile, Please. We can be found at honey-chile.com.

And I also run The Create Daily, a platform for underrepresented storytellers, that I founded in 2012. In addition to our signature weekly Opportunity Roundup, we recently launched a few exciting new initiatives: We Create Daily, our Substack Community, our Creative Comeback Workbook and Journal, and The Create Daily Lab, which features classes and workshops on storytelling and the business behind it. All of which can be found at www.thecreatedaily.com.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Our mission at HONEY CHILE and THE CREATE DAILY is pretty lofty: to help Black women and marginalized stroytellers get free, respectively. And by free, we mean personally, professionally, creatively and in all aspects of their lives.

And we aim to do this through telling stories, making sure those stories get to the people and helping the people tell their own stories.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I feel like I’m the Queen of pivoting. But my biggest pivot was what got me to LA. I was running a marketing consultancy helping social justice projects reach their audiences. I was what we call now an Impact Producer. But I was getting the bug to write again. After losing one of the biggest contracts I ever landed, I realized that I wanted to give my creative dreams a chance again.

So I moved to LA at 35 with one script. And I essentially started from scratch, taking classes, learning the lay of the land, building a new network, rebranding myself to become a TV and film writer.

And it was hard as hell. But so worth it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.feliciapride.com | www.honey-chile.com | www.thecreatedaily.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/feliciapride | www.instagram.com/itshoneychile | www.instagram.com/thecreatedaily.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/feliciapride/ | linkedin.com/company/honey-chile |