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The story of how Lovie Simone and Michael Cooper Jr., the stars of Netflix’s “Forever,” first met is like a perfectly scripted meet-cute that was fated to fuel a tender portrait of young love.
Cooper was on a flight bound for Los Angeles from Atlanta for an audition, stressed because his car had been stolen three hours earlier. But he heeded his agent’s advice to worry about it later (“He’s like, ‘Just go! If you book this, you can buy another car,’” Cooper recalls). Simone was his seatmate, en route to audition for the same TV series. Not that they had any clue then — they didn’t speak to each other on the flight. And they didn’t encounter each other in that first round. It wasn’t until they both got a callback for the chemistry read that it clicked.
Now, they’re poised to become the next teen obsession as the latest couple to go from book to screen in the newly released “Forever,” Mara Brock Akil’s adaptation of Judy Blume’s 1975 coming-of-age novel.
Both are relative newcomers — Simone, 26, has several TV credits to her name, including “Greenleaf” and “Manhunt,” while Cooper, 23, has a handful of shorts and film credits. They were cast last year to play the leads, Keisha Clark and Justin Edwards. “Forever” captures the intensity of first love and the powerful imprint it leaves as its teenage participants fumble through emotions and insecurities.
Set in Los Angeles in 2018, the series follows the romance between Keisha and Justin, two high school students who live on opposite ends of the social and economic spectrum. Keisha is a smart and confident track star whose circumstances pushed her to mature early and set big goals for life after high school, while Justin is a shy, music-loving guy who struggles with schoolwork despite his best efforts and pushing by his successful parents.
They first meet in grade school but reconnect as teens at a New Year’s Eve house party and quickly fall for each other, leading to a whirlwind romance filled with puppy eyes, miscommunication and deep longing. Their story, tracked over the course of a year, is punctuated by a sex video making the rounds at school, disruptive parental expectations and ample use of the cellphone block function (which leads to many unanswered texts).
“That first love — it changes people,” Simone says. “It changes your view on boundaries and connections and how you want to connect. It shapes you because it’s all of these ‘firsts’ and processing them and feeling them so intensely. Not in a traumatic way but in a life way.”
“Vulnerability is so tricky,” adds Cooper. “A lot of us tend to suppress emotionality versus run to it. Your first love exploits it in a complete way that you’re not accustomed to.”
The pair are in town again, this time seated in a plush, mauve-colored booth at Netflix’s offices on Vine Street on a recent day in April. If “Forever” rides the current teenage romance wave just right, it has the potential to serve as a defining breakthrough for both. But that’s not what has them laughing and growing bashful. In this moment, they’re reflecting on the lessons, growth and cringe moments that come with being young and down bad for someone.
Mara Brock Akil’s adaptation of the 1975 YA novel follows a pair of Los Angeles teenagers, played by Lovie Simone and Michael Cooper Jr., as they fall in love.
Cooper talks about planning dates weeks in advance because of his nerves and wanting to get things right with his first girlfriend. “It was this palpable love that you can’t shake,” he says. “I was like, ‘I want to take her to the beach! I want to take her hiking! I want to have a picnic!’ It sticks with you and shapes your idea of how you see the world. And it made me put someone else before myself.”
Simone’s first boyfriend, she says, was a secret. “I’m from the Bronx, so we would sneak away to Times Square in Manhattan and link up and go on dates to the movies and stuff. I remember he got me a Swarovski bracelet and I had to hide it.”
“Hold up — he got you a Swarovski bracelet?” Cooper interjects. “What?”
“Yeah!” Simone says. “I was 15 or 16. He was a year older. When it ended, I was just so distraught for, like, two years. Just a mess. But it makes you put yourself first, eventually.”
Cooper credits Akil for grounding “Forever” in that beauty of discovery in adolescence.
It’s a passion project decades in the making, even if Akil didn’t realize it.
The writer and producer is known for a TV catalog that explores the joys and complexities of Black women, with shows like “Girlfriends,” “Being Mary Jane” and “The Game.” Akil was first introduced to Blume’s oeuvre with “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret,” reading it in less than two days. It set her on a search for more of the author’s work, known for depicting the confusing experience of growing up. She was 12 when “Forever” started getting passed among her friends.
“Pages were falling out because the book had been passed around so much,” she says on a recent day at her production office in L.A.’s West Adams neighborhood. Akil, who makes a point to stress her love for sleep, recalls fighting off slumber to read it.
“I remember my mom turning off the light, and she made me leave my door open because I would close it so I could stay up late to read. But she left the hall light on and I would read the book like this,” she says as she mimics holding a book, stretching her arms as if trying to get a sliver of light on a page. “I think I still have this ‘Forever’ crook in my neck.”
It was a seminal text for her adolescent mind, she says, because she was curious about how one goes from liking and kissing someone to knowing when they’re ready to engage in sex. What is that like? How do you do it? Where do you do it? Does it hurt? How do you talk about it? “Connect the dots for me,” she says. “Forever” offered some insight.
“There’s a passage in the book that explores that — how they are making this decision and how are they doing this. I thought it was really honest and well done,” she says. “Even the first time around, it didn’t go so well. Nothing bad happens. But it wasn’t this idyllic, romantic moment. It was awkward. And I appreciated that.”
Not everyone feels the same — it has been on the American Library Assn.’s list of most frequently challenged books since the ’90s. Just last March, Florida’s Martin County School District banned it from its schools.
If you ask Akil, it speaks to the power of Blume’s pen and what has made her one of the most celebrated young-adult authors: “She treated our humanity as seriously as we took ourselves and really captured the psyche of being young. That roller coaster of joy to ‘Oh, my God, life is over’ for the smallest thing.”
Akil didn’t give the book much thought since those formative years. It wasn’t until she landed an overall deal with Netflix in 2020 and became aware that some of Blume’s work was available to adapt that Akil was determined to find a way to translate it for a new generation. However, at the time, “Forever” was not available to be optioned.
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That didn’t deter Akil. She reread the book and requested a meeting with Blume, who had written it for her daughter around the time when the birth control pill became available to unmarried women. On a Zoom call, where they both wore blue-framed glasses, Akil made her pitch. Now, “Forever” marks her debut series with Netflix.
Tapping into the need for more inclusive depictions of young love, Akil’s take isn’t a straight adaptation. For one, it centers on two Black teens, and the characters’ names have been changed to Keisha and Justin. And while the emotions the teenage characters display are universal, they are also informed by reality.
Akil decided to set the show in 2018 and have the characters attend predominantly white private schools to grapple with the experience of being young Black people navigating such institutions as they aspired for the best opportunities for their future. The inspiration stemmed from the widespread conversations about microaggressions and systemic racism prompted by George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
Lovie Simone and Michael Cooper Jr., stars of “Forever.” “A lot of us tend to suppress emotionality versus run to it,” Cooper says. “Your first love exploits it in a complete way that you’re not accustomed to.” (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Blume’s “Forever” centered Katherine, framing her as the more vulnerable protagonist because of her gender and the time period, but Akil’s adaptation explores how both Keisha and Justin are equally vulnerable. Keisha is trying not to let a scandal define her personhood. “I love that you can see what Keisha’s going through as a young Black woman with a lot of pressure on her — that anxiety, that weight the world places on you, that feeling that there’s no room for mistakes,” Simone says. “And she pushes through.”
Similarly, Justin, as a Black teen boy, is just as vulnerable when it comes to his future and the exploration of sexuality.
“I don’t see Justin in the canon that often. I don’t see the awkward but cool love interest, Black leading man in a story,” Akil says.
The experiences of her eldest son, Yasin, helped shape her vision for Justin, Akil says. (Yasin also created the music that Justin works on throughout the series.)
“I was nervous to step into the role,” Cooper says. “But there was one particular line that Mara wrote that said something like, ‘[Justin] has one foot in insecurity and the other foot in confidence’ and it hit; I was like, ‘I can connect to this.’ Even though he is different than who I am ... there is something so real and raw about it. Mara wrote such a full-figured person.”
This touching nonfiction film, featuring interviews with Blume and famous fans such as Lena Dunham and Molly Ringwald, offers a comprehensive look at the beloved author’s enduring popularity.
Akil also wanted Los Angeles to play a role in their love story. The production filmed in real neighborhoods — Keisha’s family lives in Crenshaw, and Justin’s family lives in the affluent View Park-Windsor Hills neighborhood. As the season unfolds, the pair visit places like the Fairfax District, the Santa Monica Pier and Little Tokyo.
“Something unique about living in Los Angeles, some of our vernacular here we say, ‘Above the 10, below the 10’ — I wanted to bring the beauty of both sides into it,” she says, referencing the interstate that cuts the city in half. “And how challenging that would be for young people who either don’t have access to a car or haven’t learned how to drive yet. What are the challenges it would be to see each other? It adds to the drama of it all, the connection.”
Akil’s vision earned Blume’s seal of approval.
“I was never going to do an adaptation of ‘Forever,’ but this was different. It was to be her take on ‘Forever,’ inspired by my book,” says Blume, 87, in a statement to The Times. “Now that I’ve watched all the episodes, some of them more than once, I think Mara has done a fine job reimagining the characters and story of my book. I hope audiences both new and old will come away satisfied, as I did.”
Akil, who came up as a writer on UPN’s coming-of-age sitcom “Moesha,” says she needed actors who could make you want to root for their characters, whether together or apart, and could delve into the wellsprings of the search for identity that is crucial to this story. Simone and Cooper embodied that apart, she says, but together, they brought something else out in each other, though Akil struggles to define it.
“But you can just see it. Something shifted,” she says. “I think Michael was unpredictable to Lovie and that brought something out in her that was just really beautiful. And that is what love is — it’s unpredictable.”
Palpable chemistry between leads is, of course, crucial to young-adult romance adaptations — it’s what made streaming series like “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” “The Summer I Turned Pretty” and “Normal People” successful. The night before their chemistry read, Cooper ran into Simone outside their hotel while she was waiting for an Uber Eats delivery from Wendy’s. They ended up reviewing scenes together.
“That was the first time that we had ever processed or done anything together at all,” Simone says. “It was fun. It was like, OK, now that we’ve done this in this room with the Wendy’s, we have to go out there and get it.”
Regina King, who directed the pilot and is an executive producer of the series, says she encouraged the actors to use their auditions as a touchpoint.
“I would often remind them about the first time they auditioned together and how their hearts were beating fast; the nerves may have been just because you wanted to get the role, but it’s also that, ‘Oh, what is this actor going to be like?’ What was that first feeling when you guys sat there in front of that camera, in front of us?”
Now, a few hours after our initial sit-down, Simone and Cooper are huddled inside Hachioji Ramen in Little Tokyo for a photo shoot; Simone is filling Cooper in on the horror film she’s been busy shooting. The location is significant — it’s where their characters meet for a final date of sorts, having broken up and preparing to navigate life after graduation. Choosing not to attend Northwestern like his parents did, Justin is pursuing his music instead. Keisha, meanwhile, is bound for Howard University.
“The development of these characters, for them to come to that level of communication and maturity, is good for young people to see,” Cooper says. “Justin is just stepping into himself, he’s growing up. Keisha is too; She’s at peace with letting go.”
“I love that you get to see some form of closure,” Simone adds. “Because a lot of times with breakups, there’s not much conversation around the ending. Endings can be beautiful. Endings can be beginnings. I do see Keisha and Justin reconnecting. I don’t know when or for what. They need to be themselves separately. That’s important to see too, that you can grow outside of each other.”
Akil hopes to continue exploring their story beyond one season. Maybe not forever, but at least for a while.
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