When his daring Tony-nominated play Ain’t No Mo’ opened last year, Cooper was riding high as the youngest Black American playwright in Broadway history. But it closed after just 28 performances due to poor ticket sales—despite celebrities like Will Smith, Tyler Perry and Shonda Rhimes buying out entire performances of the show to try to save it. “I don’t want to make the art that people want today,” Cooper says of his biting comedy about a creative end to racism. “I want to make the art that they need tomorrow.” Now he’s finding his groove in Hollywood. After a chance 2018 meeting with comedian Ms. Pat (whose real name is Patricia Williams), the two teamed up to create a sitcom based on her life, The Ms. Pat Show. When network executives believed Cooper was too young to helm the series, Ms. Pat advised him to write the pilot and submit it without his name on it. The move paid off: Cooper landed the showrunner gig, and Ms. Pat earned BET one of its first major Emmy nominations for outstanding directing in 2022 and 2023. Next up? A role in Uppercut, a boxing movie starring Ving Rhames.
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Jordan, it is wonderful to be here with you today.
00:09 - So great to be here with you.
00:11 It's so exciting.
00:12 - So let's start.
00:13 You made history as the youngest black playwright
00:16 in Broadway history, which is incredible.
00:18 How did that make you feel?
00:20 - Insane, you know, insane.
00:22 Like it's something you don't even really think about,
00:24 you know, 'cause you're too busy just doing the work.
00:27 But to think about the fact that, you know,
00:29 the person before me was Lorraine Hansberry
00:31 wrote A Raisin in the Sun in 1958, you know?
00:34 So to think that I'm like following in that footsteps,
00:36 in that lineage just excites me.
00:38 And also, you know, to me is the beginning of the future.
00:41 It's the beginning of a new kind of storytelling
00:44 and a new kind of theater and a new kind of Broadway,
00:46 you know?
00:47 - I wanna hear about your background.
00:50 How did you get into theater, Broadway and entertainment?
00:54 - It all started when I was really young,
00:55 like about six years old.
00:57 I would always put on these plays in my living room
01:00 and I would cut up my mom's weave
01:01 and my dad's work uniform to make costumes.
01:04 I really just like love telling stories
01:07 and love becoming other characters.
01:09 And so that started with like me doing plays in the living
01:11 room to going to the backyard, to growing from the backyard,
01:14 to doing them in the church.
01:15 So that just grew.
01:16 And then when I moved to New York,
01:18 I would like hand out flyers in Times Square
01:21 and like on the subway, trying to like pass out
01:23 and let people know that my shows were happening.
01:25 And that just grew and grew.
01:26 And then I did Ain't No Mo' at the Public Theater
01:29 and then it went from the Public Theater to Broadway.
01:32 (upbeat music)
01:34 - How did you convince producers to take a chance on you
01:38 and take a chance on Ain't No Mo' and get it to Broadway?
01:40 - Yeah, you know what's crazy is I really had to do
01:42 a lot of the work myself first.
01:44 - Really?
01:45 - Yeah, because it was one of those pieces where
01:48 it just wasn't like anything else.
01:51 You know, when people want you to compare something
01:52 to something, it's like,
01:53 I don't really know what it's comparative to,
01:55 but really I had to believe in myself
01:58 and believe in my work before I trusted other people
02:01 to believe in it for me, right?
02:03 And I think that started with putting on readings,
02:05 like with the community, like finding different,
02:07 different organizations that would let me just set up
02:10 music stands and call friends and read a play, right?
02:13 And I think once I started doing that,
02:15 that's when Jack Phillips-Moore from the Public Theater
02:18 ended up seeing a reading of it
02:20 that was done in New York Theater Workshop
02:21 with Stevie Walker Webb.
02:22 And it just kind of grew from there.
02:24 (upbeat music)
02:27 - And how were you able to like,
02:29 break into the Hollywood scene,
02:30 convince BET to take a chance on you?
02:32 What was that process like for you?
02:34 - Oh, that was a journey.
02:35 So, so the Miss Patch Show, I was 23 when I wrote it.
02:40 And I actually wrote it in my apartment.
02:42 I used to live in this horrible New York apartment.
02:46 I didn't have a closet.
02:47 I slept on a futon.
02:49 I always said I had five roommates and two rats.
02:51 'Cause it was just the best.
02:53 So I wrote that pilot.
02:55 Lee Daniels brought me to Fox and Miss Pat brought me
02:57 to Fox and they were like, absolutely not.
02:58 We're not giving a kid in college a television show.
03:01 I don't care how good his plays are.
03:02 They were like, we're not doing that, right?
03:05 So Lee's like, you know, well, we're gonna keep trying.
03:07 And Miss Pat calls me and she said,
03:10 I want you to do something for me.
03:12 I want you to write the first episode.
03:14 I was like, what?
03:14 She was like, write the first episode
03:16 and take your name off of it.
03:17 I was like, what do you mean take my name off of it?
03:20 So I took my name off of it.
03:21 I wrote the episode, trusting,
03:24 and she sent it in to Fox, her and Lee Daniels.
03:28 And Fox said, who wrote this?
03:30 And they said, it was the kids you didn't want to hire.
03:32 (laughing)
03:34 - What a good strategy.
03:35 - Yeah, and that's how I ended up being able
03:38 to have my own show.
03:39 - Wow, that's really cool.
03:41 And finally, Jordan, I'm sure you've got a lot of rejection
03:44 in your career, being in theater, being in Hollywood.
03:47 Tell me about that experience for you
03:49 and any advice you have for others who may be pitching
03:51 or going through similar rejections in their fields.
03:54 - Yeah, don't let nobody talk you out of what you know
03:57 to be true, right?
03:59 Because if they can't give you the space,
04:01 you can find the space.
04:03 If you gotta do it in the living room,
04:04 if you gotta do it in the backyard,
04:06 if you gotta do it at the rec center, do it.
04:08 There's always some form of you're not good enough.
04:12 There's always some form of we don't get it.
04:14 We don't understand it.
04:15 That's too much.
04:16 That's too, you know, what I'm grateful for
04:18 is because I've received so many no's,
04:21 at some point, spirit just knocks something into my head.
04:24 It's like, do you know who you are?
04:26 Do you know what you've done
04:28 when people told you you couldn't do it?
04:29 When people said it was impossible?
04:32 And I think that that's what's really, you know,
04:35 pushed me forward is to never, ever, ever take no
04:40 for an answer when there's a yes in the bottom of your gut.
04:43 (upbeat music)
04:45 (upbeat music)