In Judy Blume’s taboo-busting 1975 novel “Forever …,” a teenage girl has sex for the first time. It does not destroy her life. (That’s the plot twist.) But she is still surrounded by cautionary tales: unwanted pregnancies, untimely marriages and dreams deferred. The stakes of any tryst are higher for her than they are for her more experienced high school boyfriend.
When the showrunner Mara Brock Akil considered adapting the novel, a young adult classic, she saw the relationship through different eyes: her own, as a mother to Black sons. In her first meeting with Blume — whose seminal coming-of-age best-sellers helped generations understand their bodies and themselves — she made the case that a TV version should also be told from the perspective of the boyfriend, in a contemporary series focused on Black families.
If Katherine, the book’s heroine, seemed socially powerless in her era, “I would posit that Black boys are the most vulnerable at this time,” said Brock Akil, the creator of the beloved 2000s sitcom “Girlfriends,” and several other comedies. “A modern Black family, I feel like we know how dangerous the world is.”
Blume wrote “Forever …” in the aftermath of the Pill, in response to her daughter’s request for a story in which a teen girl doesn’t get punished for having, and enjoying, a sex life — the dominant narrative at the time. Blume’s antidote captures the dramatic rush of first love and the fumbling urgency of adolescent exploration in frank language that made it both irresistible for young readers (with dog-eared copies passed around in schools) and one of the most frequently banned books in America well into the 2000s.
Brock Akil’s interpretation, which debuts on Netflix on Thursday, stars Lovie Simone (“Greenleaf”) and the newcomer Michael Cooper Jr., flipping the original story’s gender roles: Simone, as Keisha Clark, is more experienced and self-assured; Cooper Jr., as Justin Edwards, is the awkward one who falls hard and needs guidance. Winningly, it preserves the source’s emotional innocence — breathe easy, parents; this is not the hard living of teen fare like “Euphoria.” But it builds tension exploring issues of race and class.
The show is set in Los Angeles in 2018, “between Trayvon Martin’s murder and George Floyd,” Brock Akil said in a recent interview, when Black families like hers “felt like we were alone and screaming in a vacuum — a very scary time.”
“We didn’t have the language that we have now,” she added, about “how we were parenting to get our children safe to their futures.”
Blume never planned to option “Forever …” for the screen. “I didn’t think it would work today,” she said in an email. (A 1978 TV movie version is best forgotten.) But Brock Akil’s twists, and the real-life experiences behind them, convinced her.
“I was intrigued,” Blume said. “I liked her enthusiasm. I liked her creative energy. I’m glad now she tells the story from both the boy’s and the girl’s points of view. I especially like getting to know the boy’s family.” Karen Pittman, whose credits include “And Just Like That …” and “The Morning Show,” and Wood Harris, a star of the “Creed” movies, play Justin’s highly involved parents. Their complex story lines are a departure, too.
After decades of turning down TV and film offers, Blume, who at 87 is still active as an indie bookstore owner and advocate against censorship, has lately opened the door. A well-received movie adaptation of “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret,” starring Rachel McAdams, Abby Ryder Fortson and Kathy Bates, arrived in 2023. It was a faithful rendering, keeping the ’70s milieu, attracting what Blume thought of as a nostalgia audience (and their daughters).
This project was pitched differently. “I don’t think 15- and 16-year-olds would’ve tuned into the ’70s version of ‘Forever,’” said Regina King, an executive producer of the series, who also directed the first of its eight episodes.
Brock Akil, 54, grew up on Blume’s work; the novelist is foundational “in the room of who I am as a writer,” she said. The trick was staying true to the entrancing feelings of “Forever …” — “the yearning, the longing, the curiosity, the nervousness” of school-age romance — in this new context. For today’s teenagers, when “they’re ready to have sex, it’s kind of like, ‘we have apps for that,’” Brock Akil said. “What we’re missing is connection and intimacy.”
The bonds and strictures of Black families were also part of her canvas. When her eldest son, an inspiration for the show, revealed that she and his father were considered the most overprotective parents in his friend group, she said: “‘Score! I’m proud of that!’” Brock Akil recalled. “And he goes: ‘No! That’s not what I’m telling you. I’m asking for some room.’”
Brock Akil developed the show, her first adaptation in a 30-year-career in TV, with periodic input from Blume but also a lot of free rein. For a while, she even rechristened a part of the boyfriend’s anatomy: his penis, which in the novel he nicknames Ralph. “Should I rename him a Black name?” she recalled wondering. “Jerome?” (Ultimately, she kept Blume’s original moniker as a thank you “for her blessing to translate the book.”)
In her version, Justin, the elder son of an affluent family and a would-be basketball star, is a neurodivergent high school junior, an anime fan and a slightly gawky good kid with a megawatt smile. “There was something that was written in the text that was, ‘Justin has one foot in confidence and the other foot in insecurity,’” Cooper Jr. said.
But an offbeat, unsmooth Black boy “is not typically the main character of anything,” said Brock Akil. “He’s the sidekick; he might be in the crew.”
Making him the protagonist was the point, King explained. “To be able to tell the story where the Black boy is quirky, to feel that it’s OK to be awkward — my hope is that a lot of young Black men that do feel that can see and recognize that there’s a lot of others out there,” she said. Cooper Jr. was one of them.
“He actually embraces it,” King said, although, she added, “there were moments where he wanted to lean more toward the cool side, and it was like, No, not yet, not yet.”
Both leads were in their early 20s when they shot the series. Doing research, Cooper Jr., a Dallas-area native who graduated from high school in 2020 and was on the path to a political science degree when he decided to pursue acting, visited a private school — a majority-white one, like Justin’s — and sought out the Black students. “There were sooo many Justins, just trying to figure it out,” he said.
And even though Cooper Jr. and his character were “very different,” he said — “I just want to smack him sometimes, and give him a big hug” — other dimensions of balancing independence and safety as a young Black man resonated. “A lot of the conversations that we had, on set or in the scenes, were things that I’ve experienced,” he said.
Keisha, Simone’s character, is a decorated track athlete and top student with her sights set on Howard University — and a propensity for sexual missteps.
“I hope that people can handle her story with grace, because it deserves some grace,” Simone said. “It’s somebody that’s so young, dealing with something so traumatizing for the first time ever.”
Simone said she “couldn’t stop thinking about” how younger audiences would respond, especially since her own siblings are still in high school. “When I was on set, I would always think, Would they agree with what I just did?” she said. “Because I know that these are things that actual teenagers go through. These are going to be stories that are theirs.”
The cast and crew, especially veterans like King, a child star turned Oscar-winning actress for “If These Walls Could Talk,” reflected on their “firsts,” talking up their entry-level jobs in the industry and bringing in photos of their own proms. (The fictional “Forever” prom, on Santa Monica pier, was way better than her real one in upstate New York, Simone said without hesitation.)
Los Angeles’s sprawl is an obstacle to Justin and Keisha, who go to different schools. But as the couple meanders into ramen shops and designer boutiques, across ball fields and onto buses, the filmmakers also took care to show its charms, especially in historically Black neighborhoods that are little seen onscreen.
“We always said, at every production meeting, ‘Guys, we are telling an epic, intimate love story, within a love letter to L.A.,’” Brock Akil recalled.
The secret to most teenage romance is that nothing much happens — but it feels as if everything has. “Judy was able to dramatize real life, and had us hooked,” Brock Akil said. “To get through the day, try to figure out who you are, have somebody to love you and text you back, and look toward a future — that’s what most people are doing.”
“Just dramatizing emotional stakes in human beings,” she added, “is worthy of the exercise and experience.”
Melena Ryzik is a roving culture reporter at The Times, covering the personalities, projects and ideas that drive the creative world.
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