In Disney+’s The Other Black Girl, Does Magical Realism Water Down The Reality Of Racism?

Spoilers ahead. As major studios and streamers turn to bookshelves for the best and brightest stories to bring to life on the small screen, the result has been some of the best TV we’ve seen in a while. Now, Hulu (Disney+ in Australia) is taking a page out of its competition’s book (pun intended) with The Other Black Girl, a 2021 novel written by Zakiya Dalila Harris that had readers split. The new series takes what many consider an already pretty wild plot and makes it even weirder, resulting in a narrative that is equal parts Reddit-worthy conspiracy theory and a ridiculous yet very applicable cautionary tale: same skin don’t make you kin. 

The Other Black Girl details the formerly humdrum existence of Nella Rogers (Sinclair Daniel), a young Black woman trying to hustle her way up the food chain of the major publishing company where she’s worked for the past two years. Nella’s got both the talent and the drive to be successful at Wagner Books, but life (read: casual workplace aggressions and red tape) has been getting in the way, keeping her stuck in her lowly assistant position. Making things even more frustrating is the fact that Nella’s the only Black person at Wagner — at least until Hazel May McCall (Ashleigh Murray) shows up one day, totally changing the atmosphere. Hazel is everything that Nella isn’t (and wishes she could be) — stylish, assertive, and confident in the workplace — but the two naturally click and form a bond that goes beyond the office. It looks like things are finally on the up and up for Nella…right?

Just when Nella is getting more comfortable at work, someone starts leaving frightening notes warning her to leave Wagner. And Hazel, who she thought was her friend, inadvertently (supposedly) puts her in a compromising position that leaves her credibility up for question. The more that Nella gets to know her new friend, the more unsure she is of what she’s been doing at Wagner all this time — and of herself as a Black person. In her unsettling introspection, she and her friends uncover a harrowing conspiracy involving Wagner and Nella’s idol, author Diana Gordon (Garcelle Beauvais, looking fab in every single scene). In a backplot that’s somewhat hard to unravel, Diana has been using a homemade hair grease to gain mind control over Black people who are struggling to attain their professional goals and climb up the ladder. This grease gives them the ability to essentially shapeshift, morphing into palatable versions of themselves that will make it much easier to thrive in the workplace. After Diana has targeted her victims, they’re sent out into the world to turn other Black people who are looking to change their life’s circumstances, and Nella is next on the list. What follows is her own moral crisis: stay the course or take the easy street?

For the most part, the series stays true to the original work that it was adapted from; the only big difference is its happier (at least, as happy as a treacherous mind-control plot targeting the Black community could get) ending. It’s also way funnier than the book, many thanks to the flawlessly delivered one-liners of Malaika (Brittany Adebumola), Nella’s discerning best friend and co-investigator. However, many of the threads it pulls from Harris’ novel are some of the same issues that readers had an issue with. The Other Black Girl’s Goodreads rating currently sits at a shaky 3.38, the concerning ratio of high praise and straight-up complaints showing a clear difference of opinion in its readers. Some of the criticism of the novel stems from confusion as to who, exactly, it was written for — a question that other Black horror projects have also had to contend with. Though Harris and most of her main characters are Black, some readers felt that their story wasn’t written for the Black gaze but for the spectacle of outsiders. “There is no way this could have been written for Black women to consume,” reads one especially harsh review. “Ain't no way!“

Onscreen, a Black show being accused of pandering to white people could be lethal, relegating the work to the drudges of the streaming archives, but the series makes a few necessary tweaks that save it from the label. Rather than a white story about Black people, we’re met with a lesson (albeit extreme) about what our community loses when survival within and assimilation into white spaces become our only goals. Hazel and the other women in Diana’s heinous plan are driven to their misdeeds because of desperation, and the systemic lack in their lives makes them lose sight of who they really are and of what their community really needs. 

Sure, Diana is a superbly dressed antagonist with a wicked scheme, but she’s not actually the real villain in this story — white supremacy is. The real villain is the fact that many companies are comfortable hiring only one Black person to fulfill their basic DEI quotas. The real villain is the fact that there are endless intentionally placed obstacles to entry for Black people across industries. The real villain is the fact that the few Black people who are in the office don’t feel comfortable because of emotional and mental warfare via constant microaggressions. And the fact that many of their white colleagues are content to just “listen and learn” instead of using their privilege for real change. Hell, capitalism is the villain! The Other Black Girl’s overarching theme? Black people who feed into this system for their own gain or make the conscious decision to ignore it totally are dangerous, no doubt about it, but they’re just pawns in the larger game. We all are — and some of us choose to play it dirty knowingly. 

“Compromising doesn’t have to mean giving up your goals,” Hazel tells Nella in their final faceoff, evil hair product in hand. “You just have to play the game because it’s the only way we can win in a system stacked against us.”

Still, The Other Black Girl doesn’t quite make the splash that Hulu desired, perhaps because it feels more like an echo of other Black horror and suspense titles that have recently hit our screens. Following the success of projects like Get Out and Lovecraft Country, many Black storytellers have utilised the paranormal as a vehicle to highlight the truly frightening nature of all of the -isms that we’re forced to contend with. Sometimes, it works — we’ll never look at a teacup or even a piece of fried chicken the same ever again — and other times, it’s felt like just another excuse to put Black people through unnecessary torture. Racism is scary enough on its own. And by creating these sci-fi worlds to couch these stories in, the reality of microaggressions or the horrors of being Black can get watered down. At its core, The Other Black Girl is a truly interesting story, but its slant into the paranormal actually does more harm than good at times. The mysterious magical hair grease is hinted at throughout the book and the series, but its transformative powers are actually far less compelling than the reality of Nella and Hazel co-existing in the same office.

If you’ve ever had the opportunity to work with other Black women in a white space, it’s either been a blessing or a curse. You hope that you’d become fast (work) friends once you have your people around, but real life can often look very different. (Ever walk down the hallway, and the other Black person at work doesn’t meet your eye or smile or give you the “I see you” nod? If you know, you know. It kinda stings, doesn’t it?) While you don’t technically have to befriend every Black person you meet — though, why not? We’re all gang! — it’s always surprising when the connection just isn’t there. With all the new diverse stories about Blackness, it’s still rare to talk about these tricky, sometimes problematic intraracial dynamics that can naturally occur as we try to make it day after day. (Shoutout, as always, to Insecure; Molly Carter’s new-girl-at-the-all-Black-firm arc in Insecure did touch on this.) The Other Black Girl would’ve been just as compelling — perhaps even more so — if it anchored its plot on Nella’s intense in-office rivalry with someone who should’ve been her ally rather than hinging on the power of hair grease. Or, if the grease was absolutely essential, we still need a few more questions answered in order to really buy into its importance to this story. What ingredients go into a mind control grease anyway? How did Diana stumble upon it in the first place? Is it good for twist outs and wash-n-gos? Is it 4C-friendly? We need answers, people!

The end of the series hints that those answers and that backstory we’ve been waiting for might not be far off; the final scene shows Nella successfully faking her initiation into Diana’s hive of girl bosses, hinting that she’s got some kind of offensive strategy up her sleeves. If The Other Black Girl gets a second season, it’s got more worldbuilding to do, but for it to work, it’ll have to lean less into magical realism and more into real talk.