It’s Not You, It’s Me: Chicago screening | June 25, 6-9 p.m., | Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh
The filmmaker Anthony Williams came of age, in a way, in Raleigh.
Originally from Arkansas, the filmmaker moved to North Carolina when he was 21 and spent the next 10 years navigating the dating scene and life in the South as a gay Black man. Now, he’s returning to the Oak City to screen his new docuseries, It’s Not You, It’s Me (INYIM), a mix of documentary and reality show that follows three queer men of color as they tackle modern dating.
It would be easy to compare INYIM to something from our current buffet of reality dating shows, but Williams’ unique concept doesn’t pit people against each other or make love a competition—think Couples Therapy, not The Bachelor. Filmed in Chicago, the INYIM bachelors speed-date under the guidance of a licensed relationship and sex therapist, consulting with their friends and family along the way. At the end, they can pick someone to keep dating, step back from the scene, or “seek additional guidance and specialized support on their self-healing journey,” per the show notes.
Where mainstream media often portrays the queer community as a monolith, INYIM represents LGBTQ+ people in a more nuanced and inclusive way, Williams told the INDY. He hopes audiences will see themselves in the show and “see themselves in an authentic light.” He’s also hoping INYIM will help audiences understand the value of therapy and act as a bridge for those who face systemic barriers to mental healthcare, including people of color.
“The show [is] funny, it’s uncomfortable, it’s vulnerable, it’s raw, it’s honest, and so I’m hoping that’s something that people can connect with,” Williams said.
INYIM: Chicago is now streaming on Open Television (OTV), which is available on Android, Roku, and Amazon Fire TV. Williams is running a crowdfunding campaign on Seed and Spark to finish post-production on the last six episodes, and hopes to form co-production partnerships to film future seasons.
INDY Week spoke with the creator about his own mental health journey, the brutal experience of dating apps, and why it’s important to know yourself before starting a relationship. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
INDY: Tell me about your own experience with therapy and your mental health journey.
ANTHONY WILLIAMS: When I was growing up, being a Black gay kid in the South, one of the mottos was “What happens in this house stays in this house. You don’t let our business go out in the street, you don’t need to talk to nobody about nothing.” You deal with it on your own, and you fix it on your own.
For the longest time, I stayed away from therapy because of what I thought it was going to be, or what people told me was going to be. You know—“It’s going to charge a shit ton of money to be able to just go in and sit on the couch and talk to somebody.” That’s the picture people paint, but it’s so much deeper than that.
If I can help break down those misconceptions about it, and even take away some of the anxiety and fear that might come along with the desire to step into therapy, then hopefully that’s the first step that will encourage people to consider it and to step into it on their own.
How would you describe today’s dating scene? What are some common experiences or challenges queer people face?
The dating scene is a mess, and I think that I can safely equate that to the rise of dating apps and the disconnection that has grown between screens. It’s giving the community license to treat people any kind of way, to talk to people any kind of way, to disregard people’s feelings any kind of way, without any consequences.
There is this overall air of judgment that people are nervous about and are experiencing consistently across these dating apps. You are judged on how you look, so people don’t want to put up a face picture. Or you’re judged on what your sexual preferences might be.
I [also] feel like our culture is greatly rooted in a sex-first, names-later basis. And I understand sexual freedom; I understand we’ve come a long way, and we still have a long way to go. But I think that really takes away from the desire to get to know a person on a deeper level.
If you let someone in so intimately on that level without having foundations of trust and communication … then that can be a little more harmful than we probably want to admit. I truly feel that with the queer community, if we’re able to step into the vulnerability of getting to know people first before stepping into the instant gratification or the instant satisfaction of sex, that really could shift things.
Why do you think it is so important that people consider their mental health as they date?
You got to know yourself and love yourself first, before you can give yourself to anybody else. I feel like it’s an overused phrase and a cliché at this point, but there is that truth to that. You cannot give away what you don’t have. And you don’t know what you have until you can become connected with yourself in a different way.
It’s vitally important for people to consider their mental health and their stability before dating someone. Because we’re all flawed people; none of us are perfect. And when you add in someone else’s flaws and imperfections into things that you haven’t even worked out on your own yet, then that can be a recipe for disaster.
[Therapy can be useful] even once you’re transitioning out of a relationship. If you don’t take the time to process, unpack, unravel all the stuff that happened … before inviting someone back into your space, that’s really going to mess things up. Because now you’re dealing with Tom, Dick, Harry, and John, and Steven, and everybody else, when you really should be focused on your relationship with Bob. And Bob only wants you, not everybody else that comes along with it.
While you were filming, was there anything about the bachelors’ experiences or their personal journeys that really resonated with you?
Yeah, very much so. There was a lot of talk about family trauma, religious trauma. And then even just the process of working through therapy. I was thinking back to my initial sessions with my therapist, and how scared I was to just be honest, because if I said some things out loud, then that made them true. Whether that was regarding previous relationships or my family, anything. The second that you say it, it makes it real.
Witnessing some of these bachelors share their experiences reminded me of my own. It just really made me realize again that I wasn’t by myself in thinking these things, in experiencing these things, in trying to bounce back from certain things. Or thinking that I’d worked through certain things when I actually hadn’t.
I feel like who we are in therapy and who we are when we go on first dates are incredibly different. Was that a tension you saw in the series?
Absolutely, and I think that that’s a tension that people experience in the real world. Everybody wants to put their best foot forward. So seeing the dichotomy of how people were open, honest, vulnerable, and themselves in therapy, and then saw how that kind of changed a little bit when they went on these dates … my producing partner Brian and I, we looked at each other, and we’re like, “What is happening? We know this person, but that’s completely different than what we’ve been experiencing.”
We found it very interesting, but we knew that that’s what happens, that sometimes people don’t fully show up as themselves on the first date. Nobody wants to be rejected or judged, especially right out of the gate, before people take the time to get to know each other.
You’ve talked about possibly producing another season of the show in Raleigh—is that on the horizon?
With Raleigh being a hometown, I totally want to come home and do it. And I have a lot of friends there who are getting introduced to the show, and they’re just like, “You gotta come do this here, I want to be on this show.” And I’m like, “Do you really, though? Because I know you.”
I really do hope that we can produce one [a season] there, because all of these issues that are prevalent in the community are heavier in the South. Just because of the geographical location, and the lack of resources, the constant attempts to erase existence and experiences.
The South is just up against so many more challenges and obstacles. To film something like this in a Southern city, to show how it differs from many other places across the world, I think is really, really important.
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