After a four-year-long hiatus, Netflix's Emmy-winning series Master of None is back for its triumphant third season, Moments in Love.
Shot on film and shifting the focus over from director Aziz Ansari's character Dev to his longtime, childhood best friend Denise (Lena Waithe) and her new wife Alicia (Naomi Ackie), Moments in Love beautifully showcases both the triumphs and the struggles of everyday queer love, proving that imperfection (and messiness) often make for the best, most universal love stories.
PRIDE got the chance to speak with Emmy winner, actor, and writer Lena Waithe, as well as her Moments in Love co-star, BAFTA winner Naomi Ackie, about Master of None's comeback, showcasing the love story of two queer Black women, cottagecore, and more!
"It's super important not just to have visibility, I think that's the bare minimum, but to show us as fleshed out well-rounded human beings," Lena told PRIDE about the importance of showcasing realistic, authentic, depictions of love and relationships between queer characters, especially two women of color. "Oftentimes when you see queer love and stories, people are afraid to show cracks or to show flaws, which I totally understand. Nobody wants to get dragged, nobody wants to get trolled. But I think because I was an (executive producer) this season, and obviously co-wrote everything, it was important that I inserted some honesty into the story because we are not perfect and we also aren't supposed to be."
She continued:
"What I really wanted to do was to show some level of immaturity that Denise may have in that relationship but also some growing up that she has to do and she's doing it in the relationship which can be very difficult for her partner, as you see in the season."
"I'm just really proud of the story we told as imperfect and as messy as it is. But I think it also, hopefully, will feel relatable to a lot of people."
"It was great having two women from the city who are Black being in the countryside and it not being the butt of a joke," Naomi said about Denise and Alicia getting to live their best, queer, cottagecore life, something we still rarely (if ever) see from LGBTQ+ character of color in media. "It wasn't played for laughs. It was actually like, they look settled in. They look happy and thriving there. And it was such a celebration of that as well that you can be in those spaces, you can acquire and fill up those spaces. Yeah, it feels like a subtle rebellion."
Master of None Season 3, Moments in Love, premieres Sunday, May 23 on Netflix.
