Interview (Part 2): Grace Sherman
My interview with the 2018 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.
Grace Sherman wrote the original screenplay “Numbers and Words” which won a 2018 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Grace about her background, her award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl has meant to her.
Today in Part 2, Grace discusses the inspiration for her Nicholl-winning screenplay “Numbers and Words” and a mathematical problem which vexes the story’s Protagonist.
Scott: That’s a natural segue to your Nicholl winning script, “Numbers and Words.” Here’s a plot summary that I found on the Nicholl site. “It’s about a young, black, mathematical genius with the potential to make one of the most important discoveries in the field as he struggles to hold onto his gifts while spending decades of his life in prison.”
You mentioned that you’ve intersected with people who’ve been incarcerated then gone back out. Was that the initial inspiration for “Numbers and Words?”
Grace: Scott, it was a variety of things. That’s one theme of mass incarceration. Also poverty. Also, I had in my head this dialogue with two characters that one liked math, one liked books, and how that would play off of each other.
It initially started there, and then it was, “Well, how would these characters emerge? What would their journey look like?” Then the pieces fit together. Different ways it all came together.
Scott: Did DeMarcus, your protagonist, come first or did Beth, or did they come together when you said you had this dialogue between math and books?
Grace: DeMarcus did come first.. I like characters that have something that is going to set them apart. They’re different. If there’s a gift, a talent, something where they stand out and they have to offer that in some kind of way. Even if there are challenges or obstacles, that gift, in some kind of way, has to emerge.
I was thinking of a character who has this immense talent, who is brilliant, and yet confined in some way where he can’t fully develop and express himself. Then, what will the conflict be? There are a lot of different aspects of conflict. Not only where would the conflict be but also where would his journey take him, and where would the hope lie?
How does he overcome that? That’s where Beth came in, someone who does challenge him. There is conflict, but the relationship is about hope.
Scott: It’s almost like you could track the story for DeMarcus through the title itself as being what if it starts off as numbers versus words to numbers and words that, by the end, he’s able…I remember, as a parent of a young child, use your words to express yourself.
He does, way at the end. He is able to express something of his feelings in an authentic and verbal way. Does that seem like a fair representation of the arc that he goes through?
Grace: Yes. He learns a different way of presenting himself, his feelings, his thoughts, his emotions. Not only the challenging ones, but also the more positive ones. Even if he does feel his back is against a wall, he doesn’t always have to come out swinging and fighting. He does embrace that aspect of himself, his own words, Beth’s words, and everyone else around him.
Scott: Let’s jump back a bit to talk about DeMarcus Daniels, the story’s protagonist. How would you describe his personality and his background at the beginning of the story?
Grace: He’s brilliant. He is determined. He also has a very protective nature. He’s giving. He has a good heart, and he wants to do the best. Not only for himself, but for everyone around him — his mother, his sister, his friend, little Ed, Beth. With that said, there’s also even a fear that something’s always out to get him, to take him out, so he always has to fight.
Every situation, like the conflict and obstacles, it’s always threatening him in some kind of way where he always has to have his guard up. While he does have this other aspect of himself to offer — a softer side, a brilliant side — there’s also the side of, “I still have to keep my fists up.”
Scott: You describe him at one point early on, this is straight from your script. “DeMarcus walks down the street haunted in the crosshairs between boy and manhood, headphones on his ears, eyes dart from left to right. Everything is mathematical. Lamp posts bend into right angles. Cars form into circles.”
That fear that you’re talking about is manifest there before you hit that last paragraph, but then that last paragraph really is quite compelling. Through his worldview, through his eye, he does see the world in a mathematical fashion. Is that right?
Grace: Yes, he does. Everything is mathematical. That’s another characteristic of him. He’s obsessive. He’s obsessed with math and trying to solve this hypothesis.
Scott: Yet, he’s got an interesting relationship to the math. On the one hand that’s how he sees the world, and sometimes when he gets angry or frustrated, which is often, he’ll work on formulas and equations to calm him down.
There’s that component, and yet he’s got this rather ambiguous feeling about it to the point of almost antipathy, in part because of this way that he sees the world. He’s got an ambivalent attitude toward the math, doesn’t he? He feels it. He sees the world that way, and, yet, at the same time, it haunts him.
Grace: Yes, definitely. It consumes him in every single way, every aspect. It can calm him down. It can soothe him. It can infuriate him. It can antagonize him. Yes, that’s part of the haunting besides being haunted where he is developmentally going into manhood, all the other aspects around him, this math problem that he’s trying to solve is haunting him as well.
Tomorrow in Part 3, Grace delves more deeply into her original screenplay “Numbers and Words” and the thematic role Joseph Campbell plays in the story.
For Part 1 of the interview, go here.
For my interviews with every Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winners since 2012, go here.
For my interviews with 53 Black List writers, go here.
