Jerrie Johnson | Advocate Now 

"When I did film the first season, I didn't think about all of the different people, all of the different demographics that Tye would be reaching," she says. "I knew Tye — being a queer black woman who is in control of her life and who is not shying away from who she was, and who was the head of a tech company — I knew how important that was. But I think the other stuff was just like, 'Oh, wow, there's so many different conversations being had here.'"

Johnson says she's rarely seen a character like Tye before, and certainly not one as developed. She shares that if she had seen someone like Tye when she was younger, it might have changed her life.

"I feel like the the Tye characters are either one dimensional or in the margin, but most of the time they're both. And it's like, that's not the person we want to see. She's just there to like move the plot along in this way," Johnson says. "And so I think that it would have been a transformative experience for me in a lot of my other friends had this been a conversation sooner."

All four of Harlem's leads are women of color, with the producers and writers also being primarily Black women. Johnson says the work environment is one she's never had the chance to experience before, which has helped hone her sense of self-worth.

"It's hard to speak up because you don't want to ever seem like people are perceiving you as nasty or angry," Johnson says, adding, "But on this set, being with these other beautiful, powerful black women — some of which I've been in the industry for ten, twenty-plus years — they helped me to develop my voice. They helped me to advocate for myself in a way that that feels right to me and my values."

Harlem is available to stream on Amazon Prime. For more interviews like these, watch Advocate Now on The Advocate Channel.