Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist decided to tackle systemic racism in tech amid the George Floyd protests

Variety

“We started the writers’ room in late June, about three weeks after the global protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, and everything was pretty insane at that time but it was pretty impossible not to talk about it,” writer Zora Bikangaga tells Variety of penning Tuesday's midseason finale. “We were talking about the various reckonings that were happening in tech, entertainment, corporate America, and we felt like a reckoning was due within the world of our show, but how could we personalize that and make it relationship-based (especially) through the lens of a white woman who is learning empathy through her superpower?” John Clarence Stewart, who plays marketing exec Simon, was first presented with the storyline last summer. After an earlier conversation with creator Austin Winsberg, Stewart spoke to Bikangaga for two and a half hours via Zoom to contribute his thoughts. The two discussed “what the specific arc with Simon was, what my experience was in the world as a Black man, his experience in the world as a Black man, and what we were weaving into the narrative,” Stewart tells TVLine. “When I talked to Austin back then, I just said, ‘If we’re going to do this, we have to do it. I don’t want to be attached to a version of this that is not as honest and vulnerable as we can get,’ and he was absolutely on board and didn’t want to shy away from it and, throughout the process, kept fighting for that level of authenticity.”