Sista Brunch

Sep 3 · 7m

At our Season Six Celebration and Season Seven Fundraiser, we set up a podcast room and invited everyone in the building to interview each other with prompt cards. This is the seventh of fifteen conversations from that day.Diana Williams — CEO and co-founder of Kinetic Energy Entertainment, previously Creative Development and Franchise Producer for Star Wars at Lucasfilm — sits down with Liz Franco, a documentary executive at a major streamer. They talk about small victories that renew hope, including a first trip to the Creative Arts Emmys and the experience of looking around a room and not seeing many people who look like you. Diana shares what she's proudest of across a long career in games, film, and podcasts: not the credits, but strangers finding joy in the work. And she names the tradeoff of this moment — it's never been easier to make something, and never been harder to get anyone's attention for it.Diana was our guest in Season 7, Episode 13 — "From the DGA Training Program to Building the Future of IP" — available wherever you're listening now.Watch the video version on YouTube (@TruJuLoMedia) or Apple Podcasts. The full unedited conversation is available to members at patreon.com/sistabrunch.Filmed at The Recording Club, Santa Monica. Recorded during the Sista Brunch Season Six Celebration and Season Seven Fundraiser, produced with Pioneer Network.Sista Brunch is brought to you by TruJuLo Productions, hosted and produced by Fanshen Cox, with our Season Seven team: Samantha K. Henderson, Tasha Rogers, Ashanti Groves, Charlie T. Savage, Shawn Pipkin-West, and Maegan Philmore. Recorded on the unceded territory of the Tongva and the Chumash in Los Angeles.Support the show: leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and join us at patreon.com/sistabrunch.

Aug 27 · 7m

At our Season Six Celebration and Season Seven Fundraiser, we set up a podcast room and invited everyone in the building to interview each other with prompt cards. This is the sixth of fifteen conversations from that day.LMU film student Kalle White sits down with Daria Strachan, a Black Girls Film Camp alum we first met at Essence Festival 2024. Kalle talks about how a year of injuries reshaped her thinking about disability and how much of the world is inaccessible — and about the early decision rejection that devastated her before it redirected her. Daria makes the case that you cannot fake your way through the film industry: not pretending to care about social issues, not pretending you're fine with how colleagues talk to you. Put your whole self out there, or you're not making real art.Watch the video version on YouTube (@TruJuLoMedia) or Apple Podcasts. The full unedited conversation is available to members at patreon.com/sistabrunch.Filmed at The Recording Club, Santa Monica. Recorded during the Sista Brunch Season Six Celebration and Season Seven Fundraiser, produced with Pioneer Network.Sista Brunch is brought to you by TruJuLo Productions, hosted and produced by Fanshen Cox, with our Season Seven team: Samantha K. Henderson, Tasha Rogers, Ashanti Groves, Charlie T. Savage, Shawn Pipkin-West, and Maegan Philmore. Recorded on the unceded territory of the Tongva and the Chumash in Los Angeles.Support the show: leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and join us at patreon.com/sistabrunch.

Aug 20 · 5m

At our Season Six Celebration and Season Seven Fundraiser, we set up a podcast room and invited everyone in the building to interview each other with prompt cards. This is the fifth of fifteen conversations from that day.Poet, author, speaker, and actor Arielle Estoria — author of The Unfolding — sits down with writer, engineer, and Made For More Entertainment founder Daniel K. Hunter. The card asks about the first creative spark. Arielle explains why she spills instead of writes, why ideas leave us if we don't foster them, and how recording her audiobook revealed the real difference between a writer and a poet. Daniel reflects on studios as creative laboratories and makes the case that podcasting isn't fizzling — it's a hundred years of radio instinct coming back with our own technological spin.Watch the video version on YouTube (@TruJuLoMedia) or Apple Podcasts. The full unedited conversation is available to members at patreon.com/sistabrunch.Filmed at The Recording Club, Santa Monica. Recorded during the Sista Brunch Season Six Celebration and Season Seven Fundraiser, produced with Pioneer Network.Sista Brunch is brought to you by TruJuLo Productions, hosted and produced by Fanshen Cox, with our Season Seven team: Samantha K. Henderson, Tasha Rogers, Ashanti Groves, Charlie T. Savage, Shawn Pipkin-West, and Maegan Philmore. Recorded on the unceded territory of the Tongva and the Chumash in Los Angeles.Support the show: leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and join us at patreon.com/sistabrunch.

Aug 13 · 20m

At our Season Six Celebration and Season Seven Fundraiser, we set up a podcast room and invited everyone in the building to interview each other with prompt cards. This is the fourth of fifteen conversations from that day.Screenwriter, script consultant, and founder of The Professional Pen Shannan Johnson sits down with director Jade-Jenise Dixon (Truth Hall), newly elected co-chair of the DGA Women's Steering Committee. They talk about the money maze facing entrepreneurs — grants built for nonprofits, sponsorships that require a different hustle — and Shannan makes her case for why multi-hyphenates should master one lane before spreading their wings. Jade shares her networking philosophy ("the word work is in network"), the story of leaving a manager who yelled at her, and a full-circle moment: her assigned DGA mentor was Sista Brunch co-creator Anya Adams.Watch the video version on YouTube (@TruJuLoMedia) or Apple Podcasts. The full unedited conversation is available to members at patreon.com/sistabrunch.Filmed at The Recording Club, Santa Monica. Recorded during the Sista Brunch Season Six Celebration and Season Seven Fundraiser, produced with Pioneer Network.Sista Brunch is brought to you by TruJuLo Productions.Support the show: leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and join us at patreon.com/sistabrunch.

Aug 6 · 14m

At our Season Six Celebration and Season Seven Fundraiser, we set up a podcast room and invited everyone in the building to interview each other with prompt cards. This is the third of fifteen conversations from that day.Actor and writer Candace Nicholas-Lippman — whose one-woman show A Rose Called Candace was produced by Viola Davis and Julius Tennon's JuVee Productions — sits down with writer C. Craig Patterson. Candace shares the moment Viola Davis told her "you betrayed yourself" and what it revealed about the people she'd been carrying. Craig tells the story of applying to Columbia with a transcript full of F's and getting in — "I had to create the history one day at a time." Together they land on faith over faking it, and why choosing not to stay down is the win.Watch the video version on YouTube (@TruJuLoMedia) or Apple Podcasts. The full unedited conversation is available to members at patreon.com/sistabrunch.Filmed at The Recording Club, Santa Monica. Recorded during the Sista Brunch Season Six Celebration and Season Seven Fundraiser, produced with Pioneer Network.Sista Brunch is brought to you by TruJuLo Productions.Support the show: leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and join us at patreon.com/sistabrunch.

Jul 30 · 9m

At our Season Six Celebration and Season Seven Fundraiser, we set up a podcast room and invited our community to interview each other with prompt cards. This is the second of fifteen conversations from that day.Line producer and Hudson Philmore founder Maegan Philmore (Season 4) sits down with writer-director E'lon Joi, founder of Black Film Allegiance (Season 1). The card asked: when did you feel the most invisible, and what did you do to reclaim space? Maegan talks about being treated as a diversity checkbox, telling a network to say Black when they mean Black, and how therapy gave her the tools to put things in writing and hold her position as an equal. E'lon reflects on why spaces like this one work as peer mentorship across levels and departments.Watch the video version on YouTube (@TruJuLoMedia) or Apple Podcasts. The full unedited conversation is available to members at patreon.com/sistabrunch.Filmed at The Recording Club, Santa Monica. Recorded during the Sista Brunch Season Six Celebration and Season Seven Fundraiser, produced with Pioneer Network.Sista Brunch is brought to you by TruJuLo Productions.Support the show: leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and join us at patreon.com/sistabrunch.

Jul 23 · 8m

At our Season Six Celebration and Season Seven Fundraiser, we set up a podcast room and invited our community to interview each other with prompt cards. This is the first of fifteen conversations from that day.USC film and television production freshman Addison Belhomme — who launched her own production company at 13 and directed two short films with First Lady Michelle Obama at 15 — trades questions with writer, director, producer, and actor Tamika Lamison. They talk about walking away from money that compromises your values, debunking the myth that Black and culturally specific material doesn't sell, and the moments that showed them their gifts could go somewhere.Watch the video version on YouTube.com/@TruJuLoMedia or Apple Podcasts. The full unedited conversation is available to members at patreon.com/sistabrunch.Filmed at The Recording Club, Santa Monica. Recorded during the Sista Brunch Season Six Celebration and Season Seven Fundraiser, produced with Pioneer Network.Sista Brunch is brought to you by TruJuLo Productions.Support the show: leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and join us at patreon.com/sistabrunch.

Jul 1 · 1m

Pull up a chair. This is Sista Brunch.Sista Brunch is a weekly podcast sharing the stories of Black women and Black gender-expansive people thriving in film, TV, and media. Hosted by Fanshen Cox (she/they), co-author of the Inclusion Rider, the show is seven seasons and 140+ episodes deep — and still growing.Every week, our guests pull back the curtain. How they broke in. What their projects really cost. What they earn, and how they negotiate. The tools they can't work without. And the advice they'd give their younger selves.This trailer features the voices of Erika Green Swafford, Felicia D. Henderson, Effie T. Brown, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Rraine Hanson, Tre'vell Anderson, Gina Yashere, Isis King, Luchina Fisher, and Georgia Fort.Every listen helps us build the largest living archive of stories you won't hear anywhere else.New episodes every Tuesday.Watch and subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@TruJuLoMediaFollow us on Instagram: instagram.com/sistabrunchpodcastJoin the community on Patreon: patreon.com/sistabrunchLearn more: sistabrunch.comSista Brunch is a TruJuLo Productions show.

Jun 30 · 44m

Four years running, the most-watched films on streaming have been led by Women of Color. So why is Hollywood still treating diverse stories as a risk?On this bonus episode of Sista Brunch, we sit down with Dr. Ana-Christina Ramón and Jade Abston, two of the researchers behind UCLA's Hollywood Diversity Report, to break down what the 2026 data actually shows about who gets to lead, direct, write, and who's actually watching.Dr. Ramón runs UCLA's Entertainment and Media Research Initiative and has spent more than two decades studying equity in Hollywood. Jade Abston is a PhD candidate at UCLA and a co-author on the report, whose own dissertation research looks at Black women's innovation in music videos and visual albums.We talk through the history of the report and why it had to be built independently of the studios, the numbers behind this year's findings for Black women in lead roles, directing, and writing, and the audience data that keeps proving the same point: Women of Color aren't just watching, they're driving the ratings.This conversation also unpacks something the headline numbers don't always show: how streaming algorithms shape what gets seen in the first place, and why visibility and sustainability are two different problems.Read the full UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report at socialsciences.ucla.eduHosted by Fanshen Cox (she/they) Guests: Dr. Ana-Christina Ramón, Jade AbstonSista Brunch is brought to you by TruJuLo Productions. Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/trujulomedia Follow on Instagram: @SistaBrunchPodcast Support the show: patreon.com/sistabrunch GiveButter.com/SistaBrunch sistabrunch.com