This week Elvis Mitchell welcomes Emmy-nominated director Dime Davis to The Treatment. Davis was nominated this year for her work on HBO’s ‘A Black Lady Sketch Show.’ She directed all six episodes and 43 sketches of the show’s first season, and is the first Black woman to be nominated for a directing Emmy. Davis also was an executive producer and director for the series ‘Boomerang’ on BET.
Davis tells Elvis Mitchell that initially she was hesitant to get involved with ‘A Black Lady Sketch Show’ because she hadn’t directed sketch comedy before. But after a conversation with the show’s creator and executive producer, Robin Thede, Davis changed her mind. Thede told her the series would be narrative, grounded, cinematic and magical, to which Davis says she realized “there is no way I cannot be a part of this.” She continues, “I didn’t even know those things could exist in a sketch world at all, especially a sketch world that is about black women.”
Davis says that while she is honored to be breaking ground with her Emmy nomination, “I just don’t want to take away from the next women in the line who have something to say in this space.” And she says the achievement of ‘A Black Lady Sketch Show’ with an almost entirely all Black female cast and crew is just as revolutionary.