The Cast of Dear White People Season 3 Now Includes Flavor Flav
Dear White People's season 3 release date was announced on Juneteenth.
Creator Justin Simien says the upcoming season "will be crazy."
The narrator, played by Giancarlo Esposito, will "immediately" join the show as a character.
In addition, new cast members have been introduced: Blair Underwood, Laverne Cox, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Flavor Flav.
If School Daze and Grown-ish had a baby, you'd get Dear White People. For the uninitiated, season 2 of Justin Simien's Netflix original (an adaptation of his 2014 film of the same name) follows a group of Black students as they navigate Winchester, a largely white Ivy League school, grappling with racism, abortion, online bullying, and the alt-right. The plotlines focus on Sam White (Logan Browning), a campus radio show host, and her friends.
Read on for everything there is to know aboutDear White People season 3.
When does Dear White People season 3 come out?
Dear White People season 3's release date is Friday, August 2nd.
The show chose to make the announcement on Juneteenth, the annual date celebrating the end of U.S. slavery in Texas and nationwide on June 19th, 1865. And because it wouldn't be a Juneteenth celebration without good food, the Dear White People cast shared the news in a video debating a delicious topic: Are grits best salty or sweet?
Marque Richardson, who plays Reggie, is firmly on team salty-savory—but DeRon Horton takes his with sugar, and "maybe butter." (The thought of butter-free grits is sad). "I do think that sweet grits are a southern staple," Logan Browning says diplomatically.
Watch the video (which will definitely make you want a bowl of grits) below.
You'll meet the narrator, and get to know Joelle better.
Last season left us with a cliffhanger. In the final scene, we caught a glimpse of a member of the "Order of X," a secret society that was alluded to throughout the show. And in a season 3 teaser (a message sent on behalf of the "Order"), Better Call Saul's Giancarlo Esposito reveals himself as the mystery narrator.
As the teaser suggests, Esposito will indeed be a character in the new season. For those wondering exactly what his deal is, the wait is (almost) over: He'll be introduced right from the very first post-credits scene.
"You don't have to wait a second longer. He's in the first scene," Simien said at a Banff World Media Festival master class on June 11 (quotes via THR). "We immediately paid that off. I knew I had to do that, as I didn't want you all to be mad at me."
"The third season is a bit of a gauntlet. It's when people are either in or out," he continued.
Simien also confirmed that we'll see lots more story for Joelle (Ashley Blaine Featherson), Troy (Brandon P. Bell), and Reggie (Marque Richardson). This may come by way of episodes that mainly follow a single character throughout, a storytelling style the show has used to great effect previously.
"It's a limitation that makes for some great creative choices," Simien says. "I felt like we don't spend enough time with these kinds of people, ever, so let's give them a whole damn episode."
It's finally springtime at Winchester.
In a June 2019 Cosmopolitan.com profile, Browning summed up season 3 as a "spring awakening."
While fall felt endless in season 2, the warmer weather will inspire original storylines, at least according to Simien. “I’m really curious to see what happens in the spring, to see what happens with a little bit of distance from these characters and sort of allow them to absorb what just happened to them,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “There’s just a whole host of topics that are still on the table from seasons 1 and 2, even stuff that didn’t make the movie I’m dying to dive into.”
"This is the first time you see springtime in Winchester, this is the first time you see romances bubbling under the surface finally start to bloom, and the first time that parts of these kids that they weren't able to look at finally get a look, and it's not pretty," Simien told the Banff audience on June 11.
The "Order of X" will be addressed.
Prestigious members-only clubs are common at Ivy League schools like Yale University (Skull and Bones Society) and Princeton (The Ivy Club), but an all-Black one? That's rare. Sam and campus journalist Lionel (DeRon Horton) were tapped to join Winchester's, but don't go crazy trying to solve this mystery.
“I think we have to follow up what the 'Order of X' is, what it means, what it continues to mean,” Simien told IndieWire. “The secret thing is something I want to build upon, because it's part of the fabric of the school. I don’t know that I want that to be the focus of next season, but you can’t just run away from that storyline.”
And it sounds like new characters will stir the pot.
After showrunners noticed that Kelsey Phillips's (Nia Jervier) sidekick Joelle Brooks (Ashley Blaine Featherson) quickly became a fan favorite, her character developed in a season 2 episode about colorism, where we learn about her parents and her all-Black high school. Simien plans to flesh out other characters' backstories, and may introduce new students.
“I’ve thought as far as the initial core characters, where their arcs sort of net out, but there are always interesting new characters and people who pop in surprising ways,” Simien told IndieWire.
In addition, Netflix announced in July that a crop of guest stars have been cast, though their roles are unknown. That list includes Laverne Cox, Yvette Nicole Brown, Blair Underwood, and Flavor Flav.
A post shared by Dear White People (@dearwhitepeople) on Jul 17, 2019 at 7:00am PDT
You're gonna love to hate (or hate to love) Reggie.
Triggered by an incident involving a white campus police officer and a gun, Reginald Green, (a.k.a "Reggie," as his woke friends call him) rebels against his well-liked, Black Student Union-activist identity in season 2. As Richardson explained, his tumultuous storyline will continue to unfold. “I feel for Reggie—he hasn’t healed yet. I’m not the writer, I just have speculation that it might get worse before it gets better,” he told IndieWire. Simien also suggested that like "a lot of Black people in America," Reggie is coping with post-traumatic stress disorder due to racism.
What's in store for Gabe...and Sam?
No news yet when it comes to occasionally-problematic white ally Gabe (John Patrick Amedori), but we can't help wanting more episodes like season two's episode 8.
Will anything stay the same?
Yes, the students' passion for campus activism. “These kids have been knocked down. They’ve had to confront themselves. So, I’m curious to pick up with them having learned the lessons of these past two seasons, and seeing them continue down this path, maybe with some new insights," Simien said.
As Simien told the Calgary Herald, "Just buckle up and surrender to the fact that Season 3 is crazy.”
