Jessica Williams is in outer space — and she’s laughing. A vast, sparkling blanket of stars serves as a virtual background for Williams, as she and Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi speak to Tudum about their new animated event, Entergalactic. Their characters, comic book artist Jabari (Mescudi) and colorful eyeliner-sporting photographer Meadow (Williams), would be right at home in the shimmering setting.
Entergalactic is not actually set in the distant reaches of the galaxy; it unfolds in a pop art–hued version of New York City, where Jabari and Meadow just so happen to be neighbors. This stroke of pure luck puts Entergalactic’s heroes on a journey that illuminates the overwhelming intensity of a new connection — how it feels like we’re leaving orbit when we meet that certain someone. Even inanimate objects move to the beats of the city (and the hi-hats or kick drums of Mescudi’s music), creating a world in which every single thing, living or not, is in perfect harmony. Of course, not everything about this love story is bigger than life. It’s also about the little things — like Meadow’s eyeliner, the very mention of which has Williams laughing.
“Just to speak to the eyeliner community: I’ve been a fan of wearing black eyeliner and then just a little bit of blue on the top since high school,” Williams says. “I really appreciate that the animators took time to study my face. That was actually a very personal thing that made it into this gigantic project.”
This attention to detail is a big part of Entergalactic, which tells a story about the kinds of people too often overlooked in the animation space. “I think we see Black stories, but there’s nothing like this really, truthfully. The fashion, the music, this is for the culture,” says Mescudi, who’s not only the co-creator and executive producer, but also recorded an accompanying, eponymous album (his tenth) for this modern love story. Entergalactic centers Black love, and it also feels like a love letter to Black people.
“I wanted to show what [dating] was like now,” explains co-creator and executive producer Kenya Barris. “It’s a time capsule that still could be timeless.” When conceptualizing Entergalactic, Barris and Mescudi were inspired by how hard it is to be single right now, how much pressure there is to be swiping for The One. The animated event explores the timeless romantic pitfalls of navigating ambition and love in the big city — such as stumbling upon the dreaded reappearing ex.
Inspired by classic rom-coms like Love Jones, Entergalactic follows Jabari as he traverses the city accompanied by a joint, his pals (voiced by Timothée Chalamet and Ty Dolla $ign), an open heart — and two wonderful women in his romantic orbit. There’s ex-something Carmen (Hollywood’s Laura Harrier) and Meadow, a woman so spectacular that Mescudi’s “Angel” plays the moment Jabari lays eyes on her. “Jabari is really taken back [by Meadow]. He’s not trying to sound cool. He’s not spitting a line,” Mescudi says. “His equilibrium is all thrown off because of Meadow. That to me is such a cute and honest moment.” Still, Jabari can’t keep Carmen from slipping back into his life. As Barris wisely notes, exes are a “test” from the universe, sent down the second “you meet someone else.”
For Jabari, that someone else is Meadow, and their meeting leads to a connection so deep that it sends them hurtling through the swirling hues of deep space. This chills-inducing scene is Williams’ favorite, and it left her “surprisingly very emotional.” The blending of the surreal and the real is something that Entergalactic director Fletcher Moules suggests is only possible through animation, “because you’re already removed from reality.”
“If Jabari is riding his bike around and all of a sudden runs into space, or if he sees Meadow and she has these watercolors just blowing out of her, it doesn’t shock you. It feels like just a part of the show,” Moules explains. “You can push that into such a fantastical place, and bring it back.”
Animation didn’t just allow Entergalactic’s team to celebrate celestial beauty, it also afforded them the opportunity to celebrate the different skin tones, hair textures and beauty of Black people. “Sometimes when I’m doing my makeup,” Williams says, “I’ll use a few different foundations, and there’ll be all these different shades of brown on my skin. I’ll be like, ‘Wow, that’s a really pretty kind of painting.’ ” In Entergalactic, the animation team takes the same approach — just amplified. “I just love the way the melanin looks in this project,” Williams says. “Then you have that against all these beautiful purples, pinks and oranges — sunset colors and space. It’s really juicy.”
The animation team’s dedication to perfectly lighting its Black and brown characters is apparent in every shot; Moules explains that he and his crew, filled with Black creatives, turned to “fantastically lit projects” starring Black people, like Moonlight, to illuminate the way. “We’re working really hard to change [the industry],” he says, hoping his collaborators will be in his director’s shoes sometime soon. Meanwhile, he feels proud of the response this project has already gotten, noting that the first screening left viewers in (good) tears. “[The response] was just, like, ‘We’ve never seen Black people animated like this or even represented that way,’ ” Moules recalls. “I think that was so important for Cudi, for Kenya, for the writing team to be able to do something that the world hasn’t seen before.”
The world might not have seen anything like Entergalactic before, but it’s definitely ready for it. Even as Entergalactic jumps into the farthest reaches of the galaxy, it returns unscathed, grounded as it is in a romance that isn’t just about marriage or kids or even finding a perfect apartment together.
“That really is love, right?” Barris says. “For me to be able to do this as an ode to someone who has gone through crazy things, wrong relationships — and seeing my daughters and friends go through things — it means a lot.”
