'South Side' Actor Chandra Russell On Why Black Women Are The Funniest People Alive

“I Run This” is a weekly interview series that highlights Black women and femmes who do dope shit in entertainment and culture while creating visibility, access and empowerment for those who look like them. So whenever she’s writing for Diallo character, my character, other people’s character, it’s that same level of compassion and commitment that she has for her own character.” For “I Run This,” Russell talks about pouring her experiences ― insecurities included ― into “South Side,” how she picks out the perfect wigs for Officer Turner and the comedic gold Black women can naturally mine. And I just feel like it’s Black women, sometimes we put so much pressure on ourselves because other people put pressure on us. We start to talk months before, pretty much as soon as we have the framework for the episodes, I’ll tell her and then she’ll be like, “All right, what are we thinking?” And we’ll just start shooting each other pictures back and forth, putting together a kind of a vision board type thing, discussing things that we think will look good, trying to figure out stuff we haven’t done. We had one of the guys do that in a flashback episode on “South Side.” It’s funny because season one, you notice only the women are playing, only the girls are playing in the wigs.