Kerry Washington isn’t known for comedy, and neither is Delroy Lindo. But when their show “UnPrisoned” from Onyx Collective debuted on Hulu last year, it caught audiences’ attention.
In the show, Edwin Alexander (Lindo) becomes “unprisoned” after 17 years, re-enters society and tries to reconnect with his grown daughter Paige, a therapist who shares her life and work on social media, and his teenage grandson. The premise reads more drama than laughter. But Edwin’s struggle is one that affects a lot of people, Lindo said via Zoom.
“It resonates for people in such personal ways,” he said. “And that’s the beauty of doing this particular work on [the] prison [system].”
The jail population ages 55 and older rose 24% from 2020 to 2021, according to a 2023 Prison Policy Initiative analysis of census data from local jails across the country. With America’s aging prison population, Black men are more likely to be handed down long sentences in their early 20s and remain incarcerated into their 50s, according to the Urban Institute. So Edwin’s story is increasingly common.
The show’s foundation is a very personal one for creator Tracy McMillan, a former journalist, screenwriter, relationship expert and host of the unscripted OWN series “Family or Fiancé.” She grew up in Minneapolis, where the show is set, and her own father was in and out of prison for most of her childhood and a lot of her adult life.
Washington, who also produces the series and is known for her social justice and voting rights activism, said she got behind the show because of its potential to “challenge people’s notions and open people’s minds around” people returning from prison and “the particular challenges they face — and then also what it means to love a returning citizen and what it means to navigate the kind of ripple effects of having a family member or loved one who is in the system.”
To shape Edwin, the 71-year-old Lindo, whose many credits include “Malcolm X,” “The Harder They Fall” and “The Good Fight,” took a multifaceted approach, including speaking with McMillan’s own father.
“I met with Will, who’s since passed on — God rest his soul — a few times, and had some very, very in-depth, very informative conversations with him about his experience, his life,” Lindo said. He also met with several organizations that work with formerly incarcerated people and has consulted with Louis L. Reed, one of the consultants on “UnPrisoned,” who is also formerly incarcerated.
“So I gathered all of this information, gathered all of this data, and then put it in my own personal hopper,” Lindo said. “And that’s how I started coming up with who Edwin Alexander would be.”
In the first season, Paige, traumatized by her upbringing, isn’t keen on being disappointed by her father yet again and doesn’t welcome the prospect of him living with her and her son, Finn (Faly Rakotohavana), even though family support is a good way to ensure he can stay free.
Finn, however, is excited to have his grandfather — and more specifically a man — in his life. Throughout the season, which includes Edwin’s longtime flame Nadine (Brenda Strong), whom Paige dislikes, Paige’s foster sister Esti (Jee Young Han), her potential love interest Mal (Marque Richardson), who is also Edwin’s parole officer, and Paige’s inner child (Jordyn McIntosh), among others, “UnPrisoned” puts on full display all the issues around incarceration that Washington mentioned, plus provides some history lessons.
In the first season, Edwin heads to Alabama with Paige and Finn in search of his birth certificate so that he can apply for a driver’s license. The trip reveals more about how his early life experiences growing up in the Jim Crow South inform who he is today. It also exemplifies why so many older Black Americans can’t produce a birth certificate, which has kept many from voting. At the end of the season, the Alexander family is again in flux, with Edwin moving out following a huge disappointment involving his grandson that could have landed him back in prison.
At the beginning of the second season, the Alexanders go to family therapy with the intent of supporting Finn.
But the therapist is someone Page neither likes nor respects. Billing himself as a “family radical healing coach,” Murphy (John Stamos), with whom Paige has publicly clashed, has an in-your-face style of therapy that engages both Edwin and Finn and sets up many laughs. It also challenges each of them to take a deeper dive into who they are, take accountability for their own actions and not simply blame external forces. For Paige, this also means allowing Finn to stand on his own. Paige begins to address her tendency to turn away from good men like Mal. Finn tries to connect with his biological father and face his other fears, while Edwin tries to really take control of his life.
Regardless of their personal challenges, they are still family, which resonates most with “UnPrisoned” fans, Washington said.
“One of the things I think is so special about the show is this kind of intergenerational love,” she said. “And the show is, in some ways, about how Paige is a member of the ‘sandwich generation,’ where you’re taking care of your parents and you’re taking care of your kids. But I think what some of us forget sometimes is everybody’s taking care of each other. And that is a beautiful thing about a multigenerational household. It’s part of the gift of being able to have wisdom go from one generation to another.”For more from NBC BLK, sign up for our weekly newsletter.