Vince Staples shared a glimpse into the creation of The Vince Staples Show and how he got Netflix to believe in his vision.
In his appearance on the After Hours podcast, Vince and his manager Corey Smyth broke down how they were able to get the idea for the hit Netflix show off the ground and get the streaming giant to buy in to the rapper's idea. According to Smyth, he was "widely surprised" by Vince's ability to adapt to writing drafts and bringing characters to life to the next level.
He also stated one of the main goals was to get networks to be honest with their notes. Because he and Vince come from a "brutally honest" space, they felt networks should be on the same wave. Vince added to that by saying at the 5:29 mark, "People like to undermine the intelligence of the audience," and that it becomes learned behavior, which then opens the door for things to go a specific way, but conversations can quickly fix that issue.
"I feel like a lot of the time we just have to have conversation," said Staples. "The way the show was written and this was always the intention, The Vince Stapes Show is not about Vince Staples as a character. It's about a perspective. It's The Vince Staples Show because I made it not because it's about me. I think that was a hard thing for a lot of people to grasp."
He continued, "Going from writing for me and then writing for the characters it became [...] kind of a disconnect but it became weird for them because they're expecting me to come in and write a show about myself but I'm writing a show about other people and how they view me in the world and that's when it became 'What is Vince going to do?' [...] but it just becomes conversation."
Vince added that people expected him to have seen various shows such as Curb Your Enthusiasm, which he claimed his show was heavily compared to. However, Vince said he hadn't seen it, and that led Netflix to ask the rapper what he was trying to achieve with his show.
"That would kind of throw people for a loop, so then it would get shaky, 'What are we doing?,'" said Vince. "Especially when you're dealing with a big company with a lot of finances and a lot of things on their slate it's not wrong to answer those questions for them. I think that's the place a lot of creative people have to get to."
He added, "Of course, I'm going to ask what you're doing if I don't know what you're doing. But sometimes that hurts people, so we just wanted to make sure that we were communicating and letting people know the real influences, the real identity of the show, and the way I wanted it to be."