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‘Forever’: Mara Brock Akil on How the Period Before George Floyd’s Murder, the Dangers of Smartphones and Judy Blume Inspired Her Black Teen Love Story

Mara Brock Akil unpacks the inspirations that drove her Netflix adaptation of Judy Blume's 'Forever,' which centers Black teens.

That’s what Mara Brock Akil concluded in the process of making a modern-day Netflix series out of “ Forever,” the groundbreaking Judy Blume novel about high-schoolers preparing to have sex for the first time. Akil’s Justin (Michael Cooper Jr.) and Keisha (Lovie Simone) start their senior year in 2018, spending half of their time on Instagram and not yet privy to the invasions into their sex lives coming from the Trump administration. Akil knows this from her own adolescent years — she remembers reading “Forever,” when she and her peers were “curious about this near-future experience of having a boyfriend that we loved and confronting whether we’re gonna have sex with them or not” — as well as the journey she’s on now, at 54.

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