new jersey

WEST ORANGE, N.J.  — America’s film industry flickered to life in this state with a chip on its shoulder.

In 1888, inventor Thomas A. Edison began developing a motion picture camera at his West Orange laboratory. His crew built an odd-shaped soundstage — giving birth to moviemaking. But soon, New Jersey lost the action to flashier New York and, then, the industry famously moved west to sunny Los Angeles, where it prospered for a century.

But filmmakers are back in New Jersey, and production is booming again.

Film activity in Los Angeles has plummeted to historic lows, with devastating consequences for crews and vendors. This series examines how L.A. lost its dominant perch as a film and TV destination and what can be done to bring Hollywood back home.

At a time when filming in Los Angeles has plunged to historic lows, New Jersey has soared, becoming one of the nation’s hottest film destinations and squeezing into the limelight of its bigger neighbor across the Hudson River.

State leaders have rolled out the red carpet. They have adopted aggressive tax credits and awarded up to $387 million to Netflix to build a $1-billion studio complex at Ft. Monmouth, a former U.S. Army base near the Jersey Shore. More than 80 buildings have been bulldozed, and on a recent afternoon, towering yellow cranes dotted the loam as soundstages, mills and office space began to take shape.

Less than 10 years ago, total movie and TV production spending in New Jersey was a mere $67 million, according to the state’s Economic Development Authority. By 2025, industry spending in the Garden State had reached $1.2 billion, as reported by production data firm ProdPro, behind only California, New York and Georgia.

Lionsgate Studios is developing six soundstages on the site of a former housing complex in Newark, N.J.

(Aristide Economopoulos / For The Times)

Meanwhile, California’s film spending declined 37% to $5.2 billion from 2021 to 2025.

Nearly three dozen major films and TV projects were produced in New Jersey in 2025, double the count of five years ago, ProdPro said.

Adam Sandler and Chris Rock have been shooting a comedy sequel, “Grown Ups 3,” for Netflix. Actor-director Dan Levy and his crew turned a Metuchen video arcade into a yarn-and-crafts store for their Netflix series “Big Mistakes.” Last month, George Clooney and Annette Bening were spotted at Baron’s Drug Store in Westfield, filming scenes for an upcoming movie.

Fox’s “The Masked Singer” struck a chord this past summer when it left Los Angeles after 14 seasons and settled into an old sports complex, the Meadowlands Arena in East Rutherford.

Prolific TV showrunners Michelle and Robert King are making their new CBS drama, “Cupertino,” in a converted warehouse in Kearny, on the banks of the Hackensack River.

“We are welcome here. … The governor of New Jersey came to our set,” Robert King said in an interview. “They really want the talent coming in and all of the infrastructure that gets built up around it.”

Jon Crowley, former director of New Jersey’s Motion Picture & Television Commission, noted the irony of how the state was winning back a business that had shifted more than a century ago to Hollywood. Then, industry pioneers balked at paying the steep licensing fees to Edison’s Motion Picture Patents Co. for use of cameras, projectors and Kodak film stock.

“Taxes drove the filmmakers away and now, tax incentives are bringing them back again,” Crowley said.

How New Jersey became a Hollywood player

New Jersey’s Hollywood revival was years in the making.

There were early stumbling blocks. Former Gov. Chris Christie vetoed bills to reinstate tax credits and, in 2011, he blocked a $420,000 credit for MTV’s loud and boozy reality show “Jersey Shore,” saying taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill for a “project which does nothing more than perpetuate misconceptions about the State and its citizens.”

Another problem was that New Jersey had been somewhat typecast as run-down. HBO audiences had come to view the state that produced Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra, Jon Bon Jovi and Joe Pesci through a lens of a particular mob family.

“Most people, when they think of Jersey, they think of the rusty-bridge opening from ‘The Sopranos,’” Crowley said. “They don’t have a picture in their mind of our beaches, our snow-capped mountains, our small towns, our big cities — and the open farmland.”

Michael Imperioli, left, James Gandolfini and Tony Sirico star in Season 2 of “The Sopranos,” the popular HBO series set in New Jersey.

(HBO)

Former Gov. Phil Murphy, first elected in 2017, thought the state was leaving money on the table. At the time, TV and movie production was surging in New York, California’s biggest rival.

The Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” starring Timothée Chalamet, was one of New Jersey’s most significant projects for 2024, with 60 filming days in the state.

(Macall Polay / Searchlight Pictures)

“We felt, you know what, we’ve got as much talent as anybody,” Murphy told The Times. “We’ve got the best location that money could buy.”

New Jersey could pull New York’s Broadway, film and TV talent for union shoots within the city’s Thirty-Mile Zone, beyond which producers must pay extra costs for hotels and other travel expenses.

What’s more, an estimated 20% of New York-area film crews live in New Jersey.

“We’re a big pro-union state and … this is a big union industry,” Murphy said. “There was no reason why we couldn’t be claiming a big slice.”

His team got to work by prioritizing economic incentives that would attract private sector investment.

“Putting Jersey back on the map was a big part of our administration’s energies,” said Murphy, who left office in January after two terms. “Film, television and digital led the way.”

He and Tim Sullivan, then the state’s economic development chief, flew to Los Angeles, toured major studios and met with top executives to size up the needs of the fast-changing business. They wanted to duplicate a modern studio complex — Great Point Studios — that had just opened in Yonkers, N.Y.

Great Point Studios founder Robert Halmi, a New York movie producer — who worked alongside his late father to create hundreds of TV shows, movies and miniseries, including “Lonesome Dove,” “Gulliver’s Travels” and “Alice in Wonderland” — recalled his early interactions with Murphy.

“His pitch was: ‘What would it take to get you guys to come to New Jersey?’” Halmi said in a recent interview.

Halmi got to the point.

“Shows follow the money, and the money in this instance is tax incentives,” Halmi said.

Robert Halmi, founder and CEO of Great Point Studios, is leading the construction of six soundstages for Lionsgate Studios in Newark, N.J.

(Aristide Economopoulos / For The Times)

With Murphy’s backing, New Jersey in 2018 adopted transferable tax credits of up to 35% for companies that film in the state.

The state has since bolstered its program, allowing a portion of salaries of actors and other big wage earners to be included in the tax credit calculation unlike California, which excludes these above-the-line costs and also has per-project caps. And unlike with neighbor New York, producers do not need to shoot in a certified film stage to qualify.

The state became a canvas two years ago for the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” from Walt Disney’s Searchlight Pictures. The Oscar-nominated movie, starring Timothée Chalamet, filmed over 60 days in dozens of locations, including Jersey City, which stood in for 1960s Greenwich Village.

Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi thriller “Disclosure Day,” from Universal Pictures, also shot across New Jersey and New York last year. So did the just-released Sylvester Stallone underdog biopic, “I Play Rocky.”

To spur long-term growth, New Jersey also gave three major entertainment companies preferential status as “studio partners”: Netflix, Paramount and Lionsgate, the Santa Monica-based studio that Halmi has worked with for years.

Those companies get a 40% base tax credit for qualified expenses, in return for making a 10-year commitment in the state, and access to an additional tax incentive pool of $150 million annually.

“Putting Jersey back on the map was a big part of our administration’s energies,” former New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said. “Film, television and digital led the way.”

(Seth Wenig / Associated Press)

New Jersey last year extended its tax incentive program to 2049. The film commission also worked with dozens of municipalities to streamline on-location permitting.

Leaders set a goal of building a sustainable industry.

“It’s not just dump-trucking money to create something out of nothing and then, as soon as the incentives dry up, it’s bye-bye,” said Evan Weiss, who became chief executive of the state’s Economic Development Authority this year.

But New Jersey lacked the infrastructure — production campuses, soundstages and nearby businesses that feed the industry, such as camera equipment rentals, lumber mills and wardrobe suppliers.

“Everyone gets excited when Timothée Chalamet is in town, but the program is about job creation: below-the-line jobs in things like trucking, carpentry, set design, hair and makeup, and catering,” Sullivan said.

So the state incentivized companies to build studio complexes.

“For bricks-and-mortar [projects] to work, you really need three key ingredients: the local crew base … local government support … and the third thing is tax incentives,” Halmi said. “New Jersey brought all those things to us basically on a silver platter.”

Great Point Studios is building six soundstages for Lionsgate at the site of the former Seth Boyden housing complex in Newark, N.J.

(Aristide Economopoulos / For The Times)

Halmi’s company, Great Point Studios, is building a $200-million, 270,000-square-foot complex in south Newark with Lionsgate Films as its anchor tenant. The location is strategic — minutes from Newark’s airport and 12 miles from Manhattan.

The 12-acre site is designed to support six soundstages, a mill, storage and office space. Construction has been in high gear to complete the project’s first phase by June.

On a recent morning, a parade of tractors hauling precast 12-inch-thick concrete slabs rumbled onto the property. Workers welded trusses to support 10,000- to 30,000-square-foot stages.

Local officials hope the project breathes life into a decayed district.

The development replaced a Depression-era public housing project, a notorious cluster of brick high-rises that were condemned because of crime and safety concerns. The buildings sat hollow for a decade. A nearby Anheuser-Busch brewery shut down in January after 75 years, leaving a hodgepodge of storefronts — a Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen, McDonald’s, an auto parts store and Focus On Jesus Bible Church.

Leon Lee grew up in Newark. The construction foreman surveyed the transformation with pride — and relief.

“It will give this area a nice facelift,” Lee said. “Businesses and stores will follow.”

Netflix takes over Ft. Monmouth

The biggest bet is about 40 miles away in bucolic Monmouth County.

Netflix is creating a massive compound on 292 acres at Ft. Monmouth, with significant help — up to $387 million — from state taxpayers.

For 94 years, Ft. Monmouth was home to the Army’s communications branch, the Signal Corps. The base served as test grounds for radio-equipped weather balloons and radar technology. Army homing pigeons once roosted here.

The base closed as part of a nationwide realignment.

“Ft. Monmouth was left for dead,” Murphy said.

The fallow 1,100-acre tract became a signature project of Murphy’s revitalization campaign. In 2022, Netflix agreed to pay $55 million for nearly a third of the real estate that straddles two boroughs, Eatontown and Oceanport. The acquisition was finalized late last year, and Netflix brought in crews to raze dozens of old military buildings.

Ft. Monmouth was the Signal Corps’ home for 94 years.

(Aristide Economopoulos / For The Times)

The Netflix project was part of the state’s Aspire economic development program, which has also been used to build housing and renovate hospitals.

The streamer plans to spend about $850 million to create a leafy campus with 12 soundstages to bring 500,000-square feet of studio space into central Jersey for Netflix productions.

A few historic Army structures, including soldier memorials, will remain on the grounds, which is a few miles from the seaside city of Long Branch, where Netflix co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos was born.

The construction, and eventual studios, will create thousands of jobs and anchor what some have dubbed “Hollywood East.” The ambition is to erect a more modern and more spacious version of a Burbank movie lot, right off the Garden State Parkway.

“We are leveraging state resources to attract private investment, create good-paying jobs, support small businesses, and generate economic activity in communities across the state,” Gov. Mikie Sherrill said in a statement. “This remarkable growth demonstrates what is possible when government serves as a strategic partner in economic development.”

More than 80 buildings have been bulldozed at the former Ft. Monmouth to make room for new studios.

(Aristide Economopoulos / For The Times)

The first phase should be complete by next fall, bringing more capacity for Netflix, which already is the state’s largest producer. Last year, the streamer said it filmed nearly 20 productions in the state. It has received enhanced New Jersey tax credits since 2024.

“Everyone wants us to succeed: the governor’s office, the mayor of the 6,000-person town of Eatontown and the labor unions,” said Will Castleberry, Netflix’s head of state regulatory and production policy. “We have gone into a place where we’re all working together to do something pretty cool.”

Netflix’s comedy series “Big Mistakes,” with Dan Levy, Boran Kuzum and Taylor Ortega, films in New Jersey.

(Spencer Pazer / Netflix)

Netflix is building 12 soundstages at the former Ft. Monmouth in Eatontown, N.J.

(Aristide Economopoulos / For The Times)

New Jersey’s film industry was among the fastest growing in the country last year, gaining nearly 2,000 jobs. Officials expect another surge once the Lionsgate, Netflix and other studios open, easing a shortage of studio space that has prompted some projects to film in New York.

“We’re looking at new studio stage space right now to help fulfill that demand,” said Scott Levy, owner of Eastern Effects, which converted the warehouse in Kearny into a cavernous stage, which CBS leased for “Cupertino.”

“But you’re talking a very expensive real estate market, and a very costly conversion,” he said.

Scott Levy’s Eastern Effects converted a warehouse in Kearny, N.J., into a soundstage that is now home to CBS’ legal drama “Cupertino.”

(Aristide Economopoulos / For The Times)

Lenders have been rattled by the misfortunes of some independent studio owners, including Culver City-based Hackman Capital Partners, which defaulted on loans to purchase the former CBS-Radford lot in Studio City and Kaufman Astoria Studios in New York — Paramount Pictures’ original home — after a nationwide production contraction.

“Nobody wants to over-commit and then get stuck: doing the right thing for the industry, but then being left with a problem,” Levy said.

The most ambitious studio project remains a dream at the foot of the Bayonne Bridge.

This is where French hedge fund manager and investor Arpad “Arki” Busson plans to build 1888 Studios, a $1.2-billion film and TV complex on the site of a former Chevron oil field and refinery.

Busson drew inspiration from L.A.’s historic studio lots. Architecture giant Gensler designed the 58-acre project to feature 17 buildings with an Art Deco aesthetic, as well as a water tower, bungalows, commissaries and a public promenade along the waterfront.

“We want to really create a home for content makers, a place where they feel that creativity is bursting,” Busson said on a recent afternoon as he walked the perimeter of the vacant parcel as winds whipped in from Newark Bay.

His firm, New York-based Togus Urban Renewal, controls an additional 20 acres of water, where he plans to park barges to be used as floating back lots.

“We want to offer the best facility,” Busson said. “A place where crews feel that it is a welcoming place to work.”

A rendering of 1888 Studios’ New Jersey production facility, which is in development.

(Togus Urban Renewal)

It took more than two years to prepare the land, a brownfield site. More than 1 million cubic yards of fill was trucked in to elevate the property by 16 feet.

New Jersey has promised a 10-year Aspire Program tax credit of up to $400 million for the construction.

After an introduction by state officials, Paramount signed on to become 1888 Studios’ anchor tenant, committing to lease nearly 300,000 square feet.

The arrangement allows Paramount and CBS productions, now owned by David Ellison’s Skydance, to qualify for the enhanced 40% transferable tax credit.

December’s groundbreaking ceremony was a headline-making event, drawing Murphy and other luminaries, including model-businessperson Elle Macpherson, who shares two sons with Busson. One is a studios’ project manager.

The family is seeking financing to begin construction next spring and open in 2029.

The 1888 Studios project is located next to New Jersey’s Bayonne Bridge.

(Aristide Economopoulos / For The Times)

Busson plans to name structures after notable New Jersey residents, including rocker Bon Jovi.

The studios’ name is a nod to the year Edison applied for a patent for the first movie camera.

“This was the place of birth of the industry, and clearly, the idea is to bring it back to Jersey,” Busson said.

Kearny playing Cupertino

Robert and Michelle King, both California natives, didn’t consider filming “Cupertino” in their home state, even though the legal drama is ostensibly set in the heart of Silicon Valley.

They’ve long produced their shows in New York, including “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight.” Their CBS crime solver, “Elsbeth,” is set in the city, and they’d envisioned producing their latest legal drama near the same complex.

But CBS executives suggested they check out New Jersey for “Cupertino.”

“We had a scout go out, going: ‘Oh, dear God, what are we going to find?’” Robert King said. “My memory of San José is [of] low-slung architecture — not skyscrapers.”

The CBS legal drama “Cupertino” is being filmed around New Jersey, including a converted warehouse in Kearny.

(Elizabeth Fisher / CBS)

But they quickly warmed to the new location.

“There were some distinctive buildings where we felt: ‘OK, that is a California look,’” King said. “We started shooting in March, so we had to scrape snow out from around an International House of Pancakes … but after that, it’s been pretty easygoing.”

Actors who live in Manhattan can travel to the 36,000-square-foot stage in Kearny in about 30 minutes. The Broadway performers whom the Kings like to cast as courtroom judges can make it to the city in time for their evening curtain calls.

“So far, so good,” Michelle King said. “It was a little bit easier to find some of the locations, weirdly, to match for Northern California in New Jersey than it might have been in New York.”

That’s a point of pride for officials in New Jersey.

“We are always happy to beat New York,” said Weiss, the Economic Development Authority chief. “We’re on our way to do that … but at the same time, we are very connected.”

Cuban American poet Kyle Carrero Lopez first learned what sanctions were as a child — not as a political measure, but as a gendered one. In his poem “Sanctions,” he describes how his father, a surly Cuban refugee who worked as a DJ, laid out the terms of acceptable masculinity.

“No dance class/no “girl toys”/don’t walk like that,” writes Carrero. “His anthem, his law, hammered, hammered, into me.”

The poem features in his debut book of poetry, “Party Line,” released in July by indie publisher Graywolf Press. As a gay, Black Cuban American, Carrero uses social etiquette as a springboard to critically examine how marginalized people learn to negotiate space — whether at a nightclub; in the stratified gay mecca of Fire Island; at a socialist magazine party; or in line for customs at the U.S. border. He cites Black cultural figures like the queen of salsa Celia Cruz, American fashion journalist André Leon Talley, the late French singer and dancer Josephine Baker and political activist Assata Shakur as guiding lights.

“There are two sides of me,” he told De Los. “Between the party girl and the politico is Kyle Carrero Lopez.”

Born in 1995 to Cuban parents in New Jersey, Carrero is now based in New York City, where he earned a master of fine arts in poetry at NYU and published his award-winning 2022 chapbook, “Muscle Memory.” He answered my phone call in South Carolina, while overlooking the Atlantic Ocean; his mother was on the precipice of getting married a second time. Carrero, already a poet, scholar, political organizer and nightlife host, would flaunt yet another title that weekend as wedding officiant. “My work is naturally in conversation,” he explained.

Many of the poems in “Party Line” came to Carrero after visiting Cuba for the first time in 2017, through the CubaOne Foundation. Inspired by the Birthright Israel program for Jewish youth, the nonprofit sponsored trips for Cuban Americans to connect with Cubans on the island. Yet for Carrero, this strengthened his political dissonance with many Cubans in the U.S., who’ve supported economic sanctions on the communist nation. In order to force regime change, in January the Trump administration levied an oil blockade on Cuba, triggering a humanitarian crisis.

Written with an unmistakably Caribbean verve and snappy, conversational meter, Carrero defines his stance on Cuba in no uncertain terms.

“This book really is for Cuban Americans,” he said. “Those of us who are not trying to destroy Cuba, that is.”

Carrero spoke to De Los about party politics, Black Cubanidad and how visiting the island changed his writing for the better. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

A lot of people fall back on these ideas about immigrant communities being all hard work and drudgery — but we come from a festive, dance-fueled culture. How did you get the idea to combine poems about parties with poems about politics?

I’ve always been involved in politics. I’ve done a lot of canvassing. In high school, I was in a learning community called the Civics and Government Institute. We did a “social reformers” panel, where you had to play somebody from a social movement. They had me up there dressed up as Elijah Muhammad in the 10th grade, asking me what I’d think of Obama. I had to drag Obama! These Nation of Islam people were not feeling the moderate Democrats.

But that informed my political engagement to this day. I was concerned with the language surrounding the embargo and U.S. aggression against Cuba. In my poem “Torricelli,” I talk about how [former New Jersey congressman and senator] Bob Torricelli wrote the Cuban Democracy Act, which he designed to, quote, “wreak havoc on that island.”

And I write a lot about nightlife. It is a family industry for me on both sides. My maternal grandfather ran a social club in New Jersey, a games parlor. My mom was a club kid. She was out all the time. Parenthood changed some things, but my father still had DJ gigs. Our basement was his studio. He’d leave the house at 9, 10 o’clock to go to the gigs. You know that new Jordan Firstman movie, “Club Kid”? I’m the original club kid.

How do you write for those who may not be ready to receive the club kid and the politico at once?

I like challenging assumptions that political people are drab and unglamorous — and that party people are brain-dead, escapist and have nothing to say. One of the problems I have with the ’90s club kid scene, as it existed, is they were extremely apolitical. And not only were they apolitical, but I would go so far as to say the club kids in the ’90s were a white supremacist entity. We don’t talk enough about how their whole thing was like whiteness and white privilege. All we’re here to do is have fun — and we see what that mentality leads to, right?

[The movie] “Party Monster”!

Yes, “Party Monster”! Michael Alig literally killed a man of color. That is not the party world that I live in. We don’t take off who we are just because there’s low lighting and fog and loud music. I’m going to respond the same way to harassment and perceived injustice as I would any other space.

To this day, there are white club kids in New York who are in the club talking in black-ccents and wearing imitations of black people’s hairstyles. And then if you call them out, they’re like, “Why? It’s a party!” And I’m like, “OK, but it’s a party where all of the music comes from Black people … you are a guest in this space.” Before I’m going to serve you a history lesson, let’s at least start with decency.

And though you may not think you’re doing politics … politics will still do you. Your club kid parents experienced politics by coming to the U.S. from Cuba. Can you tell me about their journey?

My father emigrated from Havana as a child. My mother was born to parents who emigrated in the 1950s during Batista’s regime. Cubans have a privileged relationship to immigration — the pipeline available to us [political asylum] was not the same for most people of Latin American descent.

My family came here not only as Cuban immigrants, but as Black immigrants. Politics happened to them. My father came to the U.S. in the late ’60s, getting called the N-word walking home from school with his two sisters…. They got hit so hard with belts that they would go home having soiled themselves. They were not only Black, but they didn’t even know what language or culture they were trying to assimilate to. There were layers of hatred…. When people talk about Cuban Americans, they think of white, rich Miami Cubans. It’s irresponsible to think in such a flat and one-dimensional way.

In the poem “Usefulness,” which was originally published in the Yale Review, you speak of how Black Cubans exist at the nexus of two different political agendas: the pro- and anti-Revolution contingents. Can you talk about that?

My opinion is very useful to many agendas. I joke that I would make a great Republican talking head. If I decided tomorrow that I wanted to get the GOP bag and be like, “Democrats are liars! I hate immigrants! I hate welfare! There’s two genders! We don’t need gay marriage!” — I would be a millionaire in under six months.

There’s a tokenism that happens when you exist at this nexus of identities. It’s true of the left as well sometimes. You could ask five different people in Cuba what they think about the government and they will give you five different answers. And that is OK! We need to allow that to be the case.

I don’t want what Trump and the Marco Rubios of the world want for Cuba — which is to seize it, to subjugate it and turn it into the next Puerto Rico. If people who are progressive and committed to Cuba’s autonomy don’t want that, I think part of [the work] is talking to Cuban people and hearing them out. I don’t think it’s acceptable to seek out only the opinions that match your own.

You bring up a historical moment that not a lot of Cuban Americans know about, which was the 1976 bombing of Cubana Flight 455, by an anti-Castro Cuban exile group. You said they planned on bombing a flight to Havana the week before, which your mom and her sister were on. How did they manage to avoid that?

[My grandfather] was an influential man. He knew the right people. So he heard something was going down and said, “I’m not putting my kids on that flight.” The flight went on as planned, but these men knew my grandfather and heard that his daughters were getting on the plane. To me that’s like getting on the list … sometimes you get into the party, or the plane [isn’t] bombed. It’s the same negotiation. Or just a moment of alignment.

What was it like visiting Cuba for the first time after the Obama administration eased travel and trade restrictions?

I don’t give Obama much, but he did try to normalize relations there. Unfortunately, Biden didn’t follow through with that, but for a second, we did care about Cuba.

The first time I went was in 2017, when I was 22. It was an incredible experience. My mother traveled to Cuba as a teenager; my father never went back. But they never discouraged me from going. I know that’s the case for a lot of Cuban Americans; there’s so much baggage. But once there was an easy path to go, it changed my life.

I write about Amiri Baraka’s time in Cuba, when he was earlier in his poetry journey — and his writing changed from being there. He wrote a poem called “Betancourt,” named after a young radical there. It made me more politically serious. I feel closer to my heritage, having done that.

What made you close the book with “I Saw Assata In Havana”? Did you really see Assata Shakur?

That was an imagined encounter. But it was the vision of what I imagine was her new life in Cuba — her second chance. I thought that it was a good ending note to land on, pushing against prevailing narratives.

I think the ways that we talk about our radicals — the Huey Newtons of the world, people like Kwame Ture or Angela Davis — we think of them as mythical beings, or, depending on who you ask, terrorists. But that disconnects them from their humanity. I wanted to create a portrait of [Shakur] as a normal lady who needed to pick up groceries sometimes. These were regular people who saw what was going on in the world and decided that they needed to do something about it. Each of us has that ability to enact change.

There are so many ways to make societal shifts, whether that’s writing to your officials or protesting or creating art that is challenging. What Shakur did was to say, “I don’t like this for my people. I don’t like this for the world I’m living in.” The same boot that’s on the necks of Black American people is on the necks of people in the Congo, people in Palestine, people of the global majority. We all have to share the planet. If we work together, we can have a world that can actually sustain itself.

My last question for you is: What would you like to see happen for Cuba?

I’m not a politician; I’m an artist. My duty is not toward any specific government; it is toward truth. My Cuba position, as a Cuban American, is focused first and foremost on my home country’s contribution to the conflict. If Cuba is truly no more than a failed state, why not lift all of the restrictions? Let’s see what happens when Cuba is unimpeded by hostile U.S. policy. That’s how you can best prove your point, right? Unless, of course, you’re afraid of what Cuba could be.