Actress and producer Rashida Jones is best known for her roles in the hit TV series Parks and Recreation and The Office. She’s also starred in the Kenya Barris comedy #blackAF. In 2018, she co-directed the Grammy-winning documentary Quincy about her legendary father, Quincy Jones. Her latest project is as executive producer of the Hulu series The Other Black Girl, adapted from the novel of the same name by Zakiya Dalila Harris.
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For her Treat, Jones delves into the inspiration behind some of the more dystopian motifs in her projects. Drawing from George Orwell’s timeless 1984, she argues how futuristic fiction can serve as a magnifying glass for pressing societal issues. By fictionalizing and personalizing these narratives, she underscores their potential to symbolize historical and cultural ripple effects that can hopefully lead to change.
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This segment has been edited and condensed for clarity.
A book that has influenced me my whole life is George Orwell's 1984. I read it in high school, and I think it was the first time that I understood that you could tell a story about something — fictionalize something and personalize something — that could represent a much larger human, historical, [and] cultural issue. I was obsessed with that book. And since that moment, all I want to do is think about dystopia. To what end? I don't know. But a lot of the things that I work on, whether it's The Other Black Girl or Black Mirror … I like to tell stories that feel like warnings about what could be possible. What could change, or how it could change really fast if we don't look at it closely.
George Orwell's 1984. Photo credit: Creative Commons/Wikimedia
I was such a rule follower growing up and what was especially resonant for me about 1984 was that there was this other angle that was like, 'if you follow the rules to the letter, and you completely shrink yourself as much as you can to these big brother rules, you'll be okay'. That was so funny. I didn't like that feeling. But I think especially for people who feel marginalized already, that ringing the alarm and being the rabble-rouser, the one who actually speaks up, and the consequence of that can be really terrifying. But I also think we live in a time now where you can do that and there's support behind that. I feel very lucky. I know there's a lot that's wrong in the world, but I feel very lucky to live in [the] time that we do in America. You can talk about these things, you can bring it up, you can find people who have similar experiences to you and not feel alone. You don't have to wilt away under the weight [or] the oppression of anything.
That book is so iconic because it creates a whole world that isn't the world, but it is the world, and I don't know how he did that. But the fact that we still refer to things as Orwellian … Obviously all of his writing [is impactful], but that one in particular for me, hit hard. We see it in art and we see it in reality. That, to me, that's the whole point of being an artist. If you could be a writer that can live in those two worlds, that's it. So hopefully, one day I'll write something, not 1984, but something that can hit that hard, even just for myself or for a few people, I would be so lucky.