To know and love a show by Mara Brock Akil (Moesha, Girlfriends) is to know and love Los Angeles. “My heart is in my work and part of my heart is where home is, in Los Angeles,” the creator, showrunner, and director tells Tudum.

So when Brock Akil reimagined Judy Blume’s formative 1975 hit novel Forever … as a modern TV series, she set the coming-of-age love story in the city where she learned to dream — and a long way from the book’s hometown of Westfield, New Jersey. “I thought, what better metaphor for this love story than what LA represents, for not only me, but for a lot of people. You’re looking for a place to follow your dreams, and love is a part of that,” Brock Akil says.

Set in 2018, Brock Akil’s young adult romance follows two Black teens who fall in love — with each other and with the selves they’re helping each other become — all set against the sun-kissed beauty on both sides of the city’s 10 freeway. 

Forever: Two Worlds Set Tour

Brock Akil herself grew up below the 10, by Overhill Drive and Slauson Avenue — not far from the palm-tree-lined community where Keisha Clark (Lovie Simone) and her hardworking mother, Shelly (Xosha Roquemore), reside in the series. A young, confident, smart, and fiery track star with clear dreams for her life after high school, Keisha lives in the top unit of a triplex in the Baldwin Hills and Windsor Hills area of Los Angeles. “LA has a few of those pillar communities, and I grew up in one of them. That is who I am. I write from who I am,” says Brock Akil. 

On the other side of the 10 is the mid-century modern home of Justin Edwards (Michael Cooper Jr.), which has a view overlooking the city from the actual hills of Beverly Hills. A nerd disguised in a basketball star’s body, Justin dreams of achieving the same level of success as his parents, Eric (Wood Harris), a restaurateur and chef, and Dawn (Karen Pittman), a college-educated corporate executive. “Most times, we don’t often see ourselves in that space,” says Brock Akil. “So, in Forever, we got pools, we got the dream. Dawn and Eric got their family up the hill to the dream.”

For Tudum, LA natives Brock Akil, production designer Suzuki Ingerslev (True Blood, Six Feet Under), and music supervisor Kier Lehman (Insecure, Ripley) share how they created the dreamy world of Forever’s Los Angeles.

Love Letter to LA

One of the best parts of creating a show for Brock Akil is the world-building, as she explains in the video above. “It was really important to me that we tell a love story, but also set within a love story to Los Angeles,” she says. In Forever, Justin and Keisha’s LA love story begins when they reconnect on New Year’s Eve after meeting years prior at John Thomas Dye (a real grade school in LA). For their first date, they go to the Fairfax shopping district in Central LA, a hot-spot hangout for young kids in 2018 and now. 

For a couple of LA teens, the geography of their date makes sense, as they could walk for 10 minutes from there to then dine at the Farmer’s Market at The Grove mall, which also hosts a movie theater. “When you talk about the [show as a] love letter to LA, the Farmer’s Market is such an LA institution,” says Ingerslev. “Most people don’t even know what that is — unless you’re from here, and you’ve probably gone as a kid 100 times because it’s just what you do.”

Keisha takes public transit to their meetup, while Justin has a hard time spitting out where he wants to go to his protective mother, who just wants to see him safe as a young Black man in LA. Brock Akil was inspired to adapt Forever … in 2020, after the social uprising that stemmed from the murder of George Floyd. She wanted to create a series that could capture a space for Black teens to maintain their innocence during their adolescent rite of passage. “Our children belong in the world, they’re ours, and when you see them crossing the street and going to Fairfax and doing this and doing that, they belong there. They should be there. Give them space to figure themselves out,” she says.

Forever captures so much of the LA that locals and natives would recognize: eateries including El Cholo, Canter’s Deli, Grand Central Market, and Hachioji Craft Ramen; Mulholland Drive’s scenic overlooks; event venues like Pinz bowling alley, the Cinerama Dome, Dodger Stadium, the Kia Forum, and The Biltmore hotel; and even the Culver City Stairs for Keisha’s workout. The production even took over Santa Monica Pier for Keisha’s prom night. “What a way to showcase LA on that pier,” says Ingerslev. “I love when we can go visit places that are special to all of us [locals] because it makes the whole show special.”

If you’re a longtime fan of Brock Akil’s, you’ll remember her ability to show the allure of LA’s neighborhoods, from Leimert Park in Moesha to Hancock Park in Girlfriends. And it all comes full-circle with Forever — in the very first episode of Girlfriends, the characters mention dining on Fairfax. “My love letter to Los Angeles begins at home, that place that I have always loved and adored,” says Akil.

Building the World

Brock Akil is aware that LA has been over-indexed in how it’s been presented. “But there’s a whole other Los Angeles, beautiful families and neighborhoods, just trying to get their kids to school on time,” she says. “You see all the villages that hold these families together, and more specifically, these children.”  

Both Justin and Keisha’s worlds are brimming with unconditional love: Keisha’s grandfather George (Barry Shabaka Henley) drives her to training at 4:30 a.m.; Justin’s parents attend every single one of their son’s basketball games. When spending more time in their inner worlds, Brock Akil wanted to “show two different styles of a Black family,” she says. “We wanted the epic intimacy that reflected real economics for these families that both shared a love of beauty, aesthetics, safety, and order.”

The Edwards home is a reflection of Dawn’s meticulous curation, featuring the quintessential indoor-outdoor style of living in Los Angeles. “We tried to reflect that, at least in the Edwards’ house, you can have it all,” says Ingerslev. Brock Akil describes the Edwards home as intentionally high design. “I don’t often see Black bodies moving through sets that have such depth,” she says. “So part of my aesthetic is to be able to shoot characters moving through space — which is a subtle way to say that we belong in these spaces.” 

Justin’s bedroom is designed to reflect a young man in transition. “He’s a boy becoming a man, and the decor in his room is heavily influenced by his mother,” says Ingerslev. The blues in the room reflect that he’s still her “baby boy,” with orange splashes to reflect his love of basketball. Ingerslev sees Justin meeting the more worldly Keisha as his opportunity to really grow up for the first time. “He’s seeing there’s more to life than just living in your parents’ house and having everything brought to you.”

The Clarks may not have as much money as the Edwards, “but there’s still love and family and pride and homeownership,” says Ingerslev. “Making Keisha’s space smaller but still charming and cute was important to us.” The Clark home’s architecture is an homage to old LA nostalgia, “with those old bathrooms with the two-tone tiles,” says Ingerslev. Personal touches pervade the space, with hair wraps hung on hooks in the bathrooms and Simone and Roquemore providing their own photos for authenticity. 

Keisha’s bedroom is her inner sanctum where her creativity thrives. Since the space is rented, the working-class family couldn’t put holes in the walls. So Brock Akil had the idea that Keisha would make her bedroom’s wallpaper out of photos she’d taken and printed copies of at school. “Every episode we tried to add more and more and, by the end of the show, her wall was completely full of photos,” says Ingerslev, who took the photos herself. “It’s also indicative of how she was damaged at one time, and she shut herself in her room. Her world became photographs on a wall.”

Soundtracking the World

Early on, Justin and Keisha bond by sharing music to express how they really feel. When Justin’s “looking for someone” to “please tell me who I am,” he sends her Daft Punk’s “Within.” When Keisha’s missing Justin, she sends him “See You Again” by Tyler, the Creator featuring Kali Uchis. Brock Akil namechecked both songs in her scripts, emphasizing just how central music is to Forever.

Music supervisor Lehman is a longtime Brock Akil family collaborator, first working with Brock Akil’s husband, Salim, on his films Jumping the Broom and Sparkle. Then he teamed up with Brock Akil herself on Being Mary Jane. Watching episodes and talking about music together “was a really great foundation for us having a shorthand and understanding what she’s going to respond to and what she’s going to want,” says Lehman. 

Like all Brock Akil’s projects, she came into Forever with a musical guidebook for Lehman to fill in. “He’s so good at matching me and then introducing me to a range of artists I didn’t know were in that same era doing that thing,” she says. With 2018 LA as the backdrop and R&B and hip-hop as the sonic guideposts, Brock Akil also picked her son’s brain when penning the scripts. As the muse of Forever, “he made a love playlist that skewed from a male perspective, and that’s what I listened to over and over again,” she says.

Nearly every song in Forever is from around 2018, featuring LA artists like Anderson .Paak, J*Davey, SZA, Tyler, the Creator, Victoria Monét, Nipsey Hussle, and Mayer Hawthorne. “Mayer Hawthorne’s ‘Just Ain't Going to Work Out’ is just one of my favorite tracks,” says Lehman. “That was out at around that time, and that was something I’ve always wanted to put in a show that I’ve worked on and finally had the perfect opportunity to put it in.”

Lehman is intimately familiar with Forever’s setting. Back in 2018, he was music supervisor for Issa Rae’s series Insecure, set in LA’s Inglewood neighborhood. Forever was an opportunity for Lehman to revisit his Insecure playlists from that time, along with playlists he’s personally been curating since then. Growing up, Lehman went to local record stores with his dad and listened to radio stations like Power 106 for hip-hop and KROQ for indie rock and alternative pop. “There are a lot of different cultures in LA, and bringing that all together with a basis in R&B is what helps define what LA sound is for this show,” he says. 

Justin and Keisha are naturally influenced by their parents’ musical tastes. The Edwards might sway more jazz and early ’90s, while the Clarks might lean a little more pop, current, and female-driven. Justin and Keisha’s worlds meld when their love reaches a high point, set to Daniel Caesar’s “Blessed” and “Japanese Denim.” The tone of his music and lyrics “really matched with how we wanted to tell their relationship story,” says Lehman. “It’s almost a [love] theme of what that relationship sounds like.”

Forever is now streaming, only on Netflix.