DEWAYNE PERKINS

Buds Digest: Hi Dewayne, so nice to have you!

Dewayne Perkins: Thanks!

BD: Curious about your first experiences with cannabis?

DP: I was introduced to cannabis in my mid-twenties. A friend of mine that I did comedy with asked if I wanted some. I said, “I never!” Then I tried it and I was like, oh, that's what this is. I think growing up in the D.A.R.E. era, I thought: one puff – then you're gonna be on crack. 

I realized that that was propaganda. I started to do it more often, but only socially. The first time I tried a bong was when I realized that, oh, this is a greater effect. I thought it was the bottom shelf. When I tried the bong I was like, oh, there's like a spectrum. You can go deeper. That kind of introduced me to what weed was. 

BD: Are bongs your smoking method of choice?

DP: It goes through waves. I really don't like smoking. I don't like fire, the smells, kind of gross. I'm very particular when it comes to textures. It's sticky and I'm just disgusted. So, bongs feel cleaner but I also don't need to be that high all the time. It is harder to gauge the level. I kind of juggle between edibles and then I have a vaporizer that vaporizes flower. I'm also very conscious. I want this to try to be as clean as possible because I don't like gross stuff. I do think my favorite are edibles because, I must say, I do love a surprise.

BD: Do you remember some of the first times you used it and were able to write a joke that made its way to publication?

DP: When I first started writing, I used cannabis most often in situations in which I was anxious. As a person, I think a lot. I describe it as “Dr. Strange.” There's an infinite amount of possibilities and I'm thinking about all of them. And I found that with cannabis, it kind of allowed me to lessen some of those voices and to focus on one thing specifically. When I hit that bong I had to focus on breathing and focusing on breathing takes away my thoughts from everything else. So when I started writing professionally, I felt the environment of writing was very high-stress. I was often the token black person and I think the racial dynamics created more anxiety.

BD: Super interesting. 

DP: That's when cannabis started to come into my life more. Also, I started writing in late night and the art form of late night is making jokes about the world. It was depressing and sad, so to kind of get into a mindset to be able to make jokes about things that felt very personal, I think cannabis helped. Then with practice I became perfect at it and now it’s a very helpful ritual. 

BD: Do you feel that the way you might use cannabis as a queer person of color is different?

DP: I often felt like the stereotype of “the stoner” was always white, lazy, and bro-y. There was always a vibe that never really was me. I never felt represented in that depiction of cannabis users. So, when I started using it, I realized that me and my friends were not getting high and sitting on a couch for hours doing nothing. We're getting high and pitching movies because in this space, the anxiety is talking to a zoom of six white people who might not understand this idea. So, let me mellow out. I feel like the world is the reason why I even use cannabis. I grew up with that fear of being labeled negatively because of drugs, so I think there is a thing in the back of my mind that's always like – I have to kind of showcase a new version of the stoner because if I actually represented the stereotype of a stoner that would affect me negatively. There's not many spaces where that point of view is welcomed. No one's like, “Come over here, druggie, black people, we have a space for you!” So, kind of countering that with professionalism and showcasing the ways in which weed has helped me in a more medicinal-meditative space versus just being like – I'm a couch potato. Because I don't have time for that. I'm busy. I'm a black gay man, there's already enough struggles. I can't add another one. Especially a voluntary struggle. Do the pros outweigh the cons? Cause if there's enough cons then I should not do this. And… all pros!

BD: What else do you like to do with weed?

DP: I really enjoy working out. I love taking some edibles and going to dance class. The physicalness, similarly to how I think weed gets me outta my brain, I feel like it gets me into my body. I feel things better. When I stretch, my nerve feels more sensitive to where I can feel this deeper. Creating an awareness of what getting high does to me and then figuring out where in my life that is beneficial. So, yeah, it's a lot of music, a lot of dance classes, gymnastics. Places that you probably think like, should you be high here? And I'm like – you should! The one mistake was when I got high before a tattoo, and I was like – oh, this didn't help. This is just very sensitive. I feel every needle prick. It's an experiment. 

BD: Love your point of view on cannabis. Really cool.

DP: I feel like it forced me to be more intentional. I've seen the harm of drugs, so there is a consciousness of wanting to make sure that I am using this for my benefit. Whenever I start to feel that it's detrimental, that is a time to rethink my relationship with it. I'm going on a tolerance break, just because I'm like, well, you know, do it! I can let myself know: what is my mood doing? How different am I? What effect is it having on me? I think that allows me a sense of security. I still have control over my life. This is a choice that I am making. Drugs are not terrible. They are bad when they become bad.

BD: You have some really cool projects in the works.

DP: I would say my biggest current projects are The Blackening, which premieres in June and then Clue, which I'm developing and writing for Fox. It’s an animated half hour. I'm very excited about both. I'm currently writing the pilot to Clue. Mysteries are fun and I really loved Clue the movie. I love the board game. This is my first time working with big intellectual property, so it's nice to work with something that has a history that you can use for your benefit. Then The Blackening is just my first child. It has been kind of the project that has given me the most out of my career, which I'm obsessed with because it was just a sketch that I wrote for my friends in Chicago and to kind of see the journey that it has had to become a future film was super validating to me for wanting to create my own stuff and kind of seeing what that can do for a person.

BD: How did that get to feature?

DP: The Blackening sketch was at Comedy Central. One of the producers of that sketch bought a show of mine at Hulu when they moved. Then one of them became a producer of a show that I did at ABC. Then as we did the movie, the director, Tim Story is who I'm doing Clue with. So, it just kind of keeps giving me things for my life, even though it already has given me so much. When it premiered at TIFF, that was hands down the best moment of my career so far. I always put TIFF on a level of prestige because movies go there to try to win an Oscar. So I didn't think a horror-comedy would be in a festival like that. I didn't know about Midnight Madness or kind of the culture around that. So, a movie playing at midnight, who's gonna come see this movie? It's very late. It was so fucking lit in a way that I was like…I've never been at a movie that felt like a sporting event. There were balls flying around, people yelling. There were moments where I was, “Shut up! Y'all are laughing too much! Y'all are missing stuff!”

BD: Amazing. For Clue, it's gotta be crazy to have an entire world that's already built for a show. What's it like to have all of that pressure from this preexisting classic? You’re also adapting to the animated world. 

DP: I'm really excited. Fun fact: I have a degree in animation. That's what I went to college for and I'm finally getting to use, which I haven't – what a fucking waste of my time. Now I’m like, yay, it came back. Surprisingly, I'm very excited by Clue’s history. I feel like it could have been intimidating but I think coming from improv and sketch, I love help and collaboration. Please give me anything to help me because creating worlds from scratch, like I'm not God. It's so much work but I don't think people get it. So it's nice to have people that have a history, they have a background. Very hard though. Mysteries: you gotta do so much thinking. You gotta create twists and red herrings. I feel like I'm in a writer's boot camp, but I feel like once I'm done writing Clue, I will be a much better writer. I really hope that it goes to series and it's a big hit because I really like the work that has been done so far.

BD: Huge fan of Brooklyn 99 as well. Can you tell us a little bit about that process or what that was like?

DP: That was my first narrative writing job. I moved to LA from New York after working on The Break with Michelle Wolf during the White House correspondent dinner in 2018. I came into Brooklyn 99 for season seven and eight, the last two seasons. It was very interesting coming into a room that was so established, again similar to Clue, kind of that pressure of feeling like this is not my show. It's not gonna be made or broken by me. I'm just here to add a thing that they didn't have when I wasn't here. I think that being my first job was very helpful for me as an artist to kind of get that out of the way. Within two seasons of that show I got to move up pretty quickly within the ranks of writers. I think it's very funny because during my interview I made a joke: I barely like white people and I don't like cops, but you should hire me. And they did! I was like, wow – Hollywood – I figured it out. That was the first time I ever had money too. Like, oh, I get paid weekly? That was the beginning of health insurance and feeling like what being a grownup is. So, I am very grateful for that show.

BD: Is there anything else that you'd love to do next?

DP: I really wanna get into directing. I used to direct all of my sketches and coming from Chicago, it's very DIY because there's no job. So it was a lot of creating for the sake of creation's sake. I went to school for animation and film and working as a writer on TV versus film is very different. The power dynamics are different and on TV the writer is kind of the most powerful, whereas in film the director is the most powerful. So, being able to kind of dictate the entire vision of a project is kind of my next goal; to create a “Dwayne Perkins project,” to kind of have an auteur point of view. So that is my next goal: to write, star in and direct a movie. Because I already wrote and starred, now I gotta step it up. Now I gotta create and control the entire vision.