The final season of Harlem is out, bringing a happy ending to the love story of Ian and Camille. The couple, played by Tyler Lepley and Meagan Good, have been in and out of a relationship since season 1, but ended up together with a baby. Creator Tracy Oliver says it’s a different ending — and different pregnant person — than the one she initially planned.
“I didn’t find out until I had already written most of season 3 that it was the last season. So then I scrapped everything that we had done and I was like, ‘Oh. Well, if this is the final season then I have to completely reconceive everything,'” Tracy explains. “So the season that you saw is the new version, but there was a totally different 3 that was leading to a potential season 4. But I’m glad because I this is my favorite season, to be honest. And I think being forced to imagine what the end was made me think outside the box with the stories in a way I was not going to go in this direction at all. So it was kind of a happy accident.”
With the series now over, Tracy says she’s “flattered” by its legacy and how it has helped young writers, just as scripts from Shonda Rhimes and Mara Brock Akil helped her.
“A writer in their 20s who’s on the rise right now reached out to my assistant to get my scripts and to get my pitch decks and my look books that I’ve created over the years because she wanted to study them,” Tracy says. “That meant something to me because if Girlfriends didn’t exist, I wouldn’t know to create Harlem. … Harlem for her is Girlfriends. And she was like, ‘I want to create something like that.’ … It just made my heart smile.”
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