Celebrated Chicago Indie 'Brown Girls 'Just Got Nominated For An Emmy

By Stephen Gossett in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 13, 2017 7:59PM

Sonia Denis as Patricia in 'Brown Girls'

Brown Girls, the justly acclaimed Chicago-filmed web series, doesn't require anyone's imprimatur, but it's thrilling to see it happen nonetheless. The low-budget, indie series just picked up a high-wattage, major nod on Thursday: it's been nominated for Outstanding Short Form Comedy or Drama Series in the 2017 Emmy Awards.

The series also got a boost into the broader national spotlight last month when it was confirmed that HBO would be adapting the series, with the show's creative principles, writer Fatimah Asghar and director Samantha Bailey. It launched as a seven-episode first run in February this year on OpenTV, an incubator for a variety of wonderful, queer, short-form web series. Brown Girls pivots around a South Asian-American writer, Leila, and Black-American musician, Patricia, in Pilsen; and it's sharp-eyed naturalism and focus on queer women of color felt like a breath of fresh air. We're happy the Emmys agree.

It competes against Fear The Walking Dead: Passage, Hack Into Broad City, Los Pollos Hermanos Employee Training (a Breaking Bad spinoff) and Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Slingshot. As Vulture points out, Brown Girls is the only series that wasn't based on an existing property. The Outstanding Short Form Comedy or Drama Series was introduced last year.

Check out Asghar's and Bailey's reactions below, followed by the series' first episode, just in case you still need to dive in.