Sista Brunch

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/@TruJuLoMedia

Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/sistabrunchpodcast

Join the community on Patreon: patreon.com/sistabrunch

Learn more: sistabrunch.com

Sista Brunch is a TruJuLo Productions show.

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.edu

Hosted by Fanshen Cox (she/they) Guests: Dr. Ana-Christina Ramón, Jade Abston

Sista 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

Show Notes

How does an "army brat" with no Hollywood connections become an Emmy-winning documentarian whose work sits at the center of one of the most urgent conversations in America? In this bonus brunch, filmmaker Luchina Fisher pulls up a chair to talk about the long, unexpected road from journalism to the director's chair—and the craft, ethics, and relationships that carry a story from the page to the screen to the front lines.

Luchina is an Emmy-winning filmmaker, educator, and 2026 North Carolina Media and Journalism Hall of Fame inductee. She's the director behind the new feature documentary The Dads—a follow-up to her Emmy-winning 2023 Netflix short of the same name, executive produced by Dwyane Wade—which follows fathers of trans and gender-expansive kids deciding whether to stay and fight or leave the country.

If you make things, fund things, or care about stories that move people toward action, this one's for you. Luchina shares the three questions every filmmaker should ask before any project, why "everything starts with the word" no matter how the technology changes, how an 11-minute short sparked a movement and a foundation, and an honest look at the money—including why the starving-artist myth has to go and what it actually took to pay her team.

Pull up a chair. Don't cry. Eat your chicken biscuit. (You'll understand by the end.)

In This Episode

[00:00] – Big news: Sista Brunch joins the 2026 AIR New Voices AMPLIFY cohort (supported by Apple Podcasts), plus shout-outs to cohort shows worth your follow

[02:30] – Welcome to the brunch table: meet Luchina Fisher

[04:00] – Her Journey: growing up an army brat, the '70s–'80s golden age of screen, and a big brother directing the neighborhood kids in backyard Star Trek

[06:00] – Childhood in Germany, learning the language, and watching reel after reel on the military base

[08:00] – UNC Chapel Hill, journalism, the Miami Herald, a lifelong friendship with Tananarive Due, and the leap to study film at the University of Bristol

[12:00] – The three questions every filmmaker must ask: Why this? Why now? Why me? On bias, ethics, and "can I sleep at night?"

[14:00] – Her brother's charge to "do something," her mother's story, and seeing firsthand the power and urgency of story

[16:00] – Becoming a mother, parenting a trans child, and how Gloria Allen became Mama Gloria

[18:00] – Why The Dads: the fathers who show up, and the narrative we don't hear enough

[19:30] – Let's Talk Tech: from journalist to documentarian, shooting on everything from 16mm to digital, and why the story—not the gear—is the thing

[24:30] – The short as poetry: getting it under 12 minutes, designing for middle America, and the Netflix call the day after the SXSW premiere

[28:00] – Filmmaking is relationships: how the retreat itself grew out of Luchina's idea to film these dads

[31:30] – Financials: paying your team a livable wage, the post–George Floyd commission wave, her 2024 Daytime Emmy, the lean stretch after, and teaching at Yale and Fairfield

[36:30] – Building the feature: Stephen Chukumba's "let's keep filming," house-party fundraising, Dwyane Wade, and Elevate Studios

[42:00] – Support Sista Brunch + a peek at this summer's Sista Sessions

[42:50] – Where and how to see The Dads: festival run, Pride Month screenings, and community screenings you can bring to your own town

[44:30] – Sista Brunch: Luchina sits down with her 19-year-old self in Chapel Hill—a chicken biscuit, and the words she needed to hear

[46:30] – Closing love and gratitude

Resource Stack

Luchina Fisher & her work

• Director's site: luchinafisher.com
• Production company: Little Light Productions
• The Dads (feature): thedadsfilm.com
• The Dads Foundation: thedadsfoundation.org
• The Dads (2023 Emmy-winning short) — on Netflix
• Mama Gloria — Luchina's documentary on Black trans elder activist Gloria Allen
• Team Dream — short documentary

People & partners mentioned

• Dwyane Wade (executive producer) and Elevate Studios
• Stephen Chukumba, producer and Dads Foundation co-founder
• Tananarive Due, novelist, screenwriter, and director
• Human Rights Campaign / Parents for Transgender Equality Council

AIR New Voices AMPLIFY cohort shows mentioned (links in the episode description)

• Consider This For Comfort — Eteng Ettah
• Reality Blurred — Andy Dehnart (President, Television Critics Association)
• Femme and Furious — Julia Rose Portela
• Super Sorry — Amber Janke
• Out of the Ashes — Vince Comegys-Davis
• With thanks to AIR (Association of Independents in Radio), Captain TK Dutes, and Lynn Casper

Support Sista Brunch

• Donate: givebutter.com/SistaBrunch
• Patreon (including this summer's Sista Sessions): patreon.com/SistaBrunch

What's Greeking? What's a Frankenbite? What does it mean to "package" a project? And why does a Hollywood producer call a sewing machine her most important piece of technology?

In this Sista Brunch Season 7 bonus episode, every guest shares the tool, term, or technology from their craft that an outsider would never understand. From set dressing to composing, from location management to unscripted TV editing, from documentary law to the future of AI -- this is the insider language of the entertainment industry, decoded by the people who use it every day.

Fourteen guests. Fourteen windows into how this industry actually works. Whether you're trying to break in or you've been in it for decades, you'll learn something you didn't know.

Full episode available on YouTube @TruJuLoMedia. Follow @SistaBrunchPodcast on Instagram. Support the show at Patreon.com/SistaBrunch or GiveButter.com/SistaBrunch.

How much do you really make in film, TV, and media? Fourteen Sista Brunch guests break the industry's biggest taboo and talk real money — the actual rates, salaries, and budgets behind the careers. You'll hear what a producer's cut of a budget really looks like (and why it's the first thing studios cut), how one executive learned a white colleague was earning six figures more for the same level of work, what showrunners pull in a week, how an independent journalist funded a whole TV show, what composers and location managers actually charge, and why one producer took a job just to keep her house out of foreclosure. From studio offices to indie sets, nobody holds back.

Featuring:

- Kamala Avila-Salmon — studio budgets, producer pay & executive salary bands

- April Reign — consulting, speaking fees & media futurism

- Effie Brown — producer pay, backend reality & near-foreclosure

- Kai Bowe — showrunning, unscripted rates & the S-corp advantage

- Karen Horne — executive salaries, bonuses & the pay gap

- Georgia Fort — funding independent journalism

- Felicia D. Henderson — self-financing through investors

- Aaliyah Williams — documentary budgets

- Asha Chai-Chang — cost of living & career strategy

- Ashlee Hypolite — free training & community-college pathways

- Diana Williams — entrepreneurship & the new creator economy

- Kelly Harris — location department & union rates

- Marie Douglas — composer rates & contracts

- Rraine Hanson — art department minimums

Sista Brunch is the podcast building the largest archive anywhere of the stories of Black women and Black gender expansive people thriving in film, TV, and media. Hosted by Fanshen Cox and Shawn Pipkin-West.

Watch the full episode on YouTube @TruJuLoMedia.

Follow @SistaBrunchPodcast on Instagram for clips, community, and resources.

Support the show at Patreon.com/SistaBrunch or GiveButter.com/SistaBrunch.

While working as one of Sista Brunch's season seven associate producers, Charlie T. Savage was quietly making a feature film. Voices the Musical is a 1967 period piece with nine original songs, shot in nine days in Inglewood, now nominated for Best US Narrative Feature and Best Screenplay at the 30th Annual ABFF.

In this bonus episode, Charlie shares the full journey -- co-writing the script in one month, fighting against the musical format (and being wrong), shooting a period piece with stunts and a 1965 car on a shoestring budget, and why networking across rather than up is the advice she'd give her younger self over a bag of crawfish and a Pineapple Big Shot.

Full episode available on YouTube @TruJuLoMedia.Follow @SistaBrunchPodcast on Instagram.Support the show at Patreon.com/SistaBrunch or GiveButter.com/SistaBrunch.