It may not be surprising that HBO’s new comic book series, Lanterns, is so exceedingly woke after the show’s writer revealed that she spent ten years as a left-wing community organizer for the likes of Democrat politician Karen Bass and race-hustling attorney Ben Crump.
TV writer Vanessa Baden Kelly recently appeared on the New Rockstars podcast with hosts Erik Voss and Jessica Clemons, where she spoke about her experiences writing the comic book series — which has revealed itself to be a rehash of BLM-era preachy messaging. But she also spoke about where she came from before her TV writing career.
Baden-Kelly began her working life as a child actress for Nick Jr. television, where she appeared in Gullah Gullah Island, before spending several seasons as “Kyra Rockmore” on the popular Keenan & Kel show. But after the year 2000, she took about a ten-year break from the entertainment industry and became a left-wing community activist. By 2011, she went back to seeking work as an actress and also as a writer.
Baden Kelly claimed that her acting career stalled when “diversity” started “slipping backwards” around the year 2000.
“I was working for Karen Bass while still trying to audition, but nothing was really moving because we had slipped backwards in the diversity revolution. And so I started to write,” she said.
In another segment, Baden-Kelly claims that she wrote the Lanterns scene where a character was explaining racism to an alien because “it’s 1986 and this lady knows nothing about nothing.”
The podcast’s co host suggests that the alien species which recruits Green Lanterns around the galaxy may not have known much about race relations on Earth because the Rodney King riots had not yet ravaged Los Angeles when this scene occurs — decades after the Civil Rights era. Baden Kelly enthusiastically co-signs his speculation.
The HBO series came under heavy criticism for its third episode in which one of the characters delivers a lecture on “white privilege.” Some viewers suggested the show was not endorsing the beliefs or actions of this character — the mother of John Stewart, a black Green Lantern, who abuses her son for decades to make sure he gets the gig. However, the actor playing John’s father, J. Alphonse Nicholson, said on a different podcast that the show is about how different the world could be if everyone trusted black women like his on-screen wife… and former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Lanterns is based on DC Comics’ Green Lantern universe of characters, which features the Green Lantern Corps, a multi-species policing organization that patrols the universe to keep the peace. The series is produced by James Gunn and helmed by Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof, who took a similarly race-obsessed approach in a sequel series to Alan Moore’s Watchmen.
See the whole interview below:
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: Facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston, or at X/Twitter @WTHuston