Jordan E. Cooper is a burst of sunlight. His effervescent personality is infectious, and he has every reason to be happy. As the youngest produced Black American playwright on Broadway he’s started carving a path for himself in the arts that will have a ripple effect for years to come. With his humorous, yet incendiary play, Ain’t No Mo, which ran from Nov. 9 to December 23, 2022, he cut his teeth on his journey to becoming a consummate storyteller and the youngest showrunner in television.

His Emmy-nominated sitcom The Ms. Pat Show, which airs on BET+, is steamrolling into its third season and premieres on February 23, 2023. The multi-cam sitcom is shot in front of a live audience in Atlanta. The Jeffersons, Good Times, All in the Family and Lucille Ball have influenced Jordan heavily and this is quite evident in some of the episodes of this raucous, R-rated comedy the he directs, executive produces, and co-created. He’s currently working on a new play, a film, and a new show. He has many irons in the fire and they’re all piping hot. He recently took the time to chat with us about Ain’t No Mo, The Ms. Pat Show, and his writing habits. 

On Attending The New School

The New School mainly prepared me for community and allowed me to be in a playground of artists. It prepared me for being around other artists like fashion designers, graphic designers, and musicians… all those people who come together to work on something. That’s what showrunning is, using your community.

On the Challenges of Being a Showrunner

I’ve learned that it’s hard for me to delegate because so much of the work I’ve done has been just me. Also, communication is key. It’s important that everyone is on the same page. While everyone does different things, you want them all to work together in a beautiful way. Early hours for sure. I feel like I arrive at the set sometimes with a firehose because it’s guaranteed that there will be little fires everywhere. You just have to figure out how to take out those fires and lead everyone into a space of harmony and creativity.

On the Origins of Ain’t No Mo

Ain’t No Mo came about because of a lot of things. I started writing it in the summer of 2016, when Philando Castile and Alton Sterling got murdered within a week of each other. I was at a 7-11 on 14th Street and I reached up to grab a Slurpee and this police officer put his hands on his gun. I put my hands up and he gave me a smile, nodded and walked away. I remember going back to my dorm thinking that I could have died over a $1.75 Slurpee and some high fructose corn syrup. Just wasn’t worth it…! I started to think what my own life was worth. I started wondering why we don’t all just go back to Africa. That’s where the idea came from… what if all Black people in America left.

I wrote it and one of my good friends had a reading of it, where he directed it. Then a couple of theaters saw it and wanted to put it as a part of their season. The Public Theater wanted to do it, along with the New York Theater Workshop. We did a workshop of it there and that’s when Lee Daniels saw it. He was enamored with it and wanted to do whatever he could to make sure the world got to see it. It snowballed and we ended up on Broadway two to three years later.

It’s insane! It feels amazing because I’m just added to a pantheon of vanguard artists who are coming up that are redefining what theater and Broadway looks like. I’m just glad to be a part of this group.

What I like about theater is that it’s a new audience every night. With TV, those audiences reactions are going to last forever. That’s beautiful and also terrifying…!

Jordan E. Cooper

I think the thing that I enjoy about writing is also the thing that I despise. The thing that I despise about writing is that when I sit at my laptop to start something, I feel like I’ve never written a thing before in my life. It’s like all of a sudden, I’m new. Like the Stephen Sondheim quote, “A blank canvas, so many possibilities.” That’s the thing that I despise but also adore about writing is that there are so many possibilities. I never approach it as if I’m a pro. I want to know what the Spirit has to show me now.

The Difference in Writing Ensemble Characters for Television vs Plays

Writing wise, you definitely have more time with a play than you do with an episode of television. You have more time to workshop it, to shift and change things. In television, you just have to go, have to move. I love multi-cameras, particularly for the sitcoms.  Sorry for the sound of the ambulance… I’m in NYC! What I love about multi-cameras specifically is that I’m constantly changing things. We’ll rehearse Monday through Friday but when we get in front of an audience and a joke doesn’t work, it’s like an immediate rewrite on the floor. Try it again, see if you get a laugh from the audience. It keeps you on your toes. It keeps the actors on their toes too. A lot of the time, I’ll change a line of dialogue or monologue and give it to the actor, but I won’t tell the other actors in the scene, so they have to have a genuine reaction whenever we shoot it.

On the Birth of The Ms. Pat Show 

It’s a long story! I saw Ms. Pat on a daytime talk show when I was in high school. I fell in love with her. She does something that I aspire to do in all of my writing, which is finding that balance of laughter and tears. A year later she wrote a book, which I was excited to read. I couldn’t afford it because it was about $35 on Amazon. I was busy trying to buy my four for fours at Wendy’s! I screenshot it and told myself I’d come back for that book whenever I could afford it. 

Flash forward to the workshop of Ain’t No Mo. Lee Daniels started talking about a comedian he met who he was trying to come up with a concept for. He asked me if I could read her book because he thought we had the same sense of humor. I was excited to get the book and it turned out the be the Ms. Pat book. I read it and immediately saw this sitcom in my head. I’m such a fan of old school sitcoms like All in the Family, The Jefferson’s, Good Times, and Golden Girls. I’m a Norman Lear head and Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz head. I wanted to do my version of a family sitcom, where it’s uncensored. A rated R sitcom. Thankfully, she trusted me. I remember I sent her the first draft of the script and she said, “I can’t say nigga on TV!”  I said, “Why not?” She said, “I can’t let these white people hear me talking like that!”  I said, “Well, that’s how you talk!” I’m all about not censoring one’s self, especially for Black folks. So much of our existence in film, television, and theater is editing ourselves so that we’re palatable for a certain audience. The Motown Effect. I wanted to do the exact opposite of that. I wanted to create space for us to be as liberated as any other race can be.

On Ain’t No Mo Being the Blackest Thing You’ll See

It’s really, just that! There are no respectability politics. The play doesn’t give a damn that we’re on Broadway. We’ve literally had audience members twerking in the seats. It’s exactly the way I wanted it to feel, which is like an HBCU homecoming or a family reunion. If you go see a chitlin’ circuit play, Black folks gonna do what  they gonna do.

On Staying Motivated

I think what really motivates me is that I have so many stories inside that I want to get out. I want them to exist so I can watch them.  The place that I write from is I want to write things that I want to watch and that challenge me. I gotta eat so hopefully I’m expanding the dinner table and allowing others to eat when I share my work.

On Writing Female Characters vs Male Characters

I try not to approach them differently. I just listen. But when I sit down to write at my computer, the first voice that will come out is a female character and I think that’s because I was raised around a lot of strong women. I don’t see enough variety in Black women’s stories or women of color’s stories period.

On the Challenges of Being a Showrunner

What I’ve learned is that it’s hard for me to delegate because so much of the work I’ve done has been just me. Also, communication is key. It’s important that everyone is on the same page. While everyone does different things, you want them all to work together in a beautiful way. Early hours for sure. I feel like I arrive at the set sometimes with a firehose because it’s guaranteed that there will be little fires everywhere. You just have to figure out how to take out those fires and lead everyone into a space of harmony and creativity.

On Keeping the Writers’ Room Progressive

Yes, we have an amazing writers’ room. I usually try to fill it up with a lot of new writers and a lot of playwrights because I believe multi-cam is an extension of theater. We have some great veterans as well. But what I found during the first season was that there was a lot of fighting because it was such a different kind of show. For people who had worked in the business for a long time don’t always see the vision and they’re used to working in a certain way. What I was trying to do was to go outside of the box. That’s why I’m adamant about bringing new people in. We have some that started in Season One and are still with us for Season Four. Sometimes you just have to grow your garden when you’re doing something new. I would say to any writer entering the industry don’t lose sight of your creativity when you’re serving someone else’s vision.

I like to talk in the writers’ room. I like to hear the writers’ opinions on things and talk about what’s going on in the news. Then, I’ll come in with an episode idea. Then we try to see how that will work.

On the Difficulty of the First Season vs the Most Recent Season

The first season is hard because you’re setting the tone and you’re training people about what the world is and how the show works. We shot in Atlanta and Atlanta had never had a traditionally shot multi-cam before. Usually, their sitcoms are shot without a studio audience and they do an episode a day. A lot of the work was training people about how to do a traditional sitcom. As seasons go on, you have to make sure that what you’re producing is quality and you’re not just doing it to do it.  Never sell a show that you don’t know the end to. Otherwise, there’s the possibility of jumping the shark.