Stefani Robinson Is Enough for Herself

No one can argue that the film Chevalier doesn't open with a bang—within the first moments, the titular character, Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (played by Kelvin Harrison Jr.), struts onto a stage and challenges Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a violin duel. As they go back and forth, a timid crowd awakens with Bologne's show of mastery as he confidently defeats Mozart to the cheers of the auditorium. It's an opening sequence that is tense, joyful, and rebellious all at the same time. "That scene with Mozart is one of my favorite things I've ever written because it's so silly," says writer and producer Stefani Robinson. "It is such a strange way to open a movie. But I wanted to open with that scene because it just felt cheeky and weird and anachronistic. And it obviously didn't happen in real life."

For Robinson, the scene also carried another intention. "I was trying to call out the notion that Joseph Boulogne had been labeled the Black Mozart for so much of his life," she explains. "When doing the bulk of my research, he was constantly referred to as 'the Black Mozart, the Black Mozart, the Black Mozart.' It was always in comparison to this person who everyone regarded as being better than. So it was the middle finger to that idea and just getting it over with as quickly as possible. Like, this is not going to be a movie about Mozart. This is not going to be a movie about some beloved white historical figure that you all know and love."

Given the lack of journals or records from Bologne's perspective, the film is inspired by true events but weaves fictional characters and elements into his life story. Bologne was born in Guadeloupe in 1745 to a settler father and an enslaved mother and was sent to France at a young age to enroll in school. Credited as the earliest Black composer, he would eventually rise to prominence in France in the late eighteenth century as a champion fencer, violinist, and composer whose operatic work was beloved by Marie Antoinette before he would go on to join in the French Revolution.

Chevalier is a dramatic turn for thirty-year-old Robinson, who is best known as a comedic writer on hit shows like FX's Atlanta and What We Do in the Shadows, and marks her first foray into feature films. Bologne's story is one Robinson has been thinking about since her mother gave her a book on the composer when she was fifteen and describes his life as feeling "cinematic and operatic, almost like a fairy tale or something mythical." Instead of trying to squeeze his whole life into one movie, the film narrows in on his pursuit to become the maestro of the Paris Opera. "From the very beginning, I didn't want to do a cradle-to-grave story. That was really important to me," says Robinson. "I didn't want to write and shoot the Wikipedia page. That's not interesting. That's not why I'm a writer. That's not why I write movies. The amazing thing about writing movies or TV series is that you get to inject so much imagination. Imagination is the thing that differentiates me from a historian."

One imagined scene is a flashback of Bologne being dropped off at boarding school by his father. His father sternly warns him to "always be excellent" before sending him off to the wolves of white students and faculty, and it's a message that Bologne carries with him throughout the film until it causes his undoing. "So much of the movie is about excellence and perfection being a faulty armor for people," says Robinson. "It's this idea, especially with anyone marginalized, that if I can just be the best and I can excel, and I can be perfect at what I'm doing and be without fault, then I'll be untouchable and I'll be safe. For Joseph, it was this idea that if I'm perfect or excellent, I won't be sent back to a literal plantation or an abstract metaphorical one too."

That sentiment of chasing excellence is well-known to Robinson. Having primarily grown up in Marietta, a suburb of Georgia, and then studied screenwriting at Emerson College in Boston before moving to Los Angeles, she says that she spent so much of her life trying to be the best at everything, from having the highest grades to being the tallest or skinniest. "There was something in my brain that is like, 'If I have to do it, I have to commit myself wholeheartedly and be the best at everything because I can't have any faults, otherwise it'll be used against me," she says. "But it's not real. None of it's real, and none of it actually does protect you. In the movie, it doesn't end up protecting him at all. It doesn't really save you. It's not true armor. I think being comfortable with yourself and with all your faults and flaws is ultimately the healthiest way to live. But it's a hard thing to unlearn when you've been learning it the other way your whole life."

Having started in Hollywood as an assistant at an agency, Robinson got her break when her writing sample about a recently deceased young girl who befriends a ghostly Paul Revere made its way to Donald Glover as he was looking to round out his writers' room for Atlanta. Glover quickly hired Robinson to contribute to the story of Earn (Glover) and his cousin Alfred as they navigate the titular city's rap scene, and she became the youngest writer and the only woman on the team. Running for four seasons from 2016-2022, Robinson made an impact as a writer, producer, and executive producer, earning WGA awards and Emmy nominations for her memorable episodes that delved into character studies.

It's fitting that Robinson's last episode she wrote for Atlanta, "Light Skinned-ed," features Earn's parents, who hadn't reappeared since the first episode, and explores the relationships that snake out through their own extended family on one particular Sunday morning. "So much of it was based on my own family and going to church and the toxic dysfunction of in-laws and family secrets and things like that," says Robinson. "It's nice to be able to write episodes like that."

When asked what she thinks it was that made Atlanta such a unique show, Robinson says that she believes that it was a lack of fear that made it special. "Donald was a fierce defender of us as the writers and the project and the tone. And he just didn't care about being canceled," she reflects. "[It was] an environment where Donald was like, 'Look, we're just going to do whatever we want to do, and if it doesn't work out, that's okay because that's what creativity is.' It's the process. It's trying. It's engaging with yourself and your own taste, defending your own taste, and doing that without compromise. I think to him that always was the most important goal, that we were serving ourselves first as artists."

Committing to pushing the limits of creativity is just one of the many lessons that Robinson says she's taken from her time on Atlanta. "It's back to this idea of excellence. If a show is successful, that means I've sort of quote-unquote won," she says. "Having spent that time on Atlanta, I just know that there's this whole other part of the creative process that has nothing to do with it. This sounds so stupid to say because it sounds obvious, but it's not obvious to a lot of people, but really commit yourself to the creative process and trust your own instincts and trust that compass that's in you for a reason. There's a reason that it's there, and that is the thing that differentiates you from anybody else. Not everyone's going to like it and not everyone's going to love it, but it's sort of not the point."

It's a sentiment that echoes back to the Chevalier and his journey of self-acceptance—he spends the majority of his energy working to please others until he doesn't, finally finding a truer sense of purpose. "I think that I've learned to try to bolster myself in my own creative pursuits without necessarily looking for validation from something as ever-changing as Wall Street and corporations and what's happening on the internet and TikTok and Instagram," says Robinson. "It's all trendy and it's so easy to get caught up in thinking about what other people might want. Donald was amazing at training us, and me in particular, in how to fight for your own voice and be okay just with the result."

Atlanta is now streaming on FX on Hulu. We stand with the Writers Guild of America.

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