As a first-generation Guyanese child, Rachael Holder lived on Long Island but spent a lot of time in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, going to church and soaking up the culture. It is probably no coincidence that her first feature film as a director is Love Brooklyn, starring André Holland (Roger) , Nicole Beharie (Casey), DeWanda Wise (Nicole) and Roy Wood Jr. (Alan).
Rachael has a playwriting MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She’s directed several television shows—most recently Run The World—as well as several shorts. Rachael sat down to talk to me about her directorial debut, Love Brooklyn.
Reggie Ponder, The Reel Critic: I mention in my review that there is a melodic rhythm to this film. How did you use the landscape and the music to create what I believe is a rich jazz composition?
Rachael Holder: Oh my God, that’s so kind. I listened to a soundtrack that I created while creating the decks for this piece. Paul’s writing has a lot of subtext, a lot of things that are unsaid, and I didn’t want to fill them in, in dialogue. And so, in order for the actors and I to be on the same page, I had to create. Initially it was like a script of my own, just filling in the gaps and then creating bios for the characters, and then, for our heads of departments, creating decks for costumes and design and just building the world. And I did that with listening to classical music, jazz, R&B, and hip hop—a collection of stuff. And then I gave that music to our editor along with my shot list and decks so that he could understand the pace and rhythm that I was hoping for. And I’m glad that you picked that up. Yeah, it’s a song.
Reggie Ponder, The Reel Critic: The people were shot so beautifully in this. Talk about your cinematographer and how you guys worked together on this.
Rachael Holder: Martim Vian is one of my favorite people. I hope to shoot all my movies with him. We had a length of time to prep on this movie. We were shut down a few times—COVID, the strikes, various financial reasons, schedules, et cetera. So when he became my teammate in this, we had a lot of time to play and to create offline when we weren’t technically in prep and build the language of this movie, and there were visual North Stars that I had that Martim, as the genius that he is, was able to capture. We talked so much about light, about lighting our skin so that we could be seen, but not just seen, but stunning. And elevated, and without it being glossy in a way that feels I guess artificial, but at arm’s length—like not feeling like we’re grounded in real life. I think movies in general with Black people tend to be on a spectrum of very, very grounded in real life where it feels gritty, and a subject matter can call for that, or it’s like whimsical and aspirational and broad in that we’re so lit. And to find a happy medium with the budget that we had was difficult, and he really did it. I was very happy to work with him and our production designer Lili. Our sets, our locations were characters too; there was nothing anamorphotic. So we were always seeing exactly where we were.
Reggie Ponder, The Reel Critic: You are from New York. So how does this film sit with you as you see the changes in the city, but akin to Andre’s character, long for that old school feeling?
Rachael Holder: I’m from Long Island. I was born and raised on Long Island, but I started going to Brooklyn before I had memories. My family would get into the car every Sunday morning and drive down to church in Bed-Stuy, and we would be there for hours. So it was like a second home. From the time I was a baby, I’ve certainly seen Brooklyn change in my real life. So I think that we’re in a moment of change all over. So I think that Brooklyn being the coolest city, being the city of so much culture, it was a good representative of our current time.
Reggie Ponder, The Reel Critic: In my review I also said that ‘Love Brooklyn’ speaks to how you can love something so much that when it changes, you can’t see the lovable parts that remain nor the ones that grew anew.” Do you agree with that? And if so, how so?
Rachael Holder: You can love some things so much that you can’t see the lovable parts that were made? I don’t know if I would agree with that because I think that when you love something so much and it changes, sometimes you don’t see that it’s changed or that you have within it changed. Like the relationship between Casey and Roger. Casey has changed; she’s not the young, first relationship that he had at the start of their knowing each other. But I think his love of her has sort of kept her in this same spot in his heart and mind, and he hasn’t seen that. Realizing, “You know what? Things are different. We should probably move on or not.”
Reggie Ponder, The Reel Critic: Okay. I appreciate that. I would want to debate you on this, but I only have so much time, so I’m just going to say thank you.
Rachael Holder: I would love a debate, Reggie. I can see it. I can see that we would have so much fun.
Reggie Ponder, The Reel Critic: But moving on, I love seeing Black Love on the big screen. It’s often portrayed within a community trauma that is unforgiving. But here the love is not destroyed by the community and we get to see what I believe is the trauma behind the trauma. How do you think the environment impact that you have in this movie impacts our experience of the people involved?
Rachael Holder: I think you’re right. I think that it’s lovely to watch Black Love without the traumatic crescendos of trauma and have the trauma be sort of in the backdrop of what’s happening. That was very much a north star for us. We wanted to create a piece where we wanted to do something radical where Black people are just existing and were okay. There are crescendos within the romantic story, but it’s not because something traumatic or horrific is happening. It’s just the crescendo of everyday life.
Reggie Ponder, The Reel Critic: This film covers the issue of honesty and none of the characters were honest with themselves. In some ways they were honest with each other more than they were honest with themselves. Can you speak to that?
Rachael Holder: Oh my gosh, one hundred percent. One of the things that drew me to this movie was the comedy, and the comedy that I read was in the women and how they would talk directly to Roger. They would decide directly whether or not they wanted to be with Roger to his face. We don’t see scenes with their friends, family, cousins, or therapists. No, it’s with him that they’re like, “You know what? I don’t know.” And not in an insulting way, they’re not being fresh. They’re being just genuinely healthy women adults. And I love that. I do think that because they’re working out what they want in front of Roger, they were being really healthy and very blunt, honest, and transparent. There were no games being played. But I do think it was difficult for them to be honest with themselves because, for one, Nicole is a mom and she’s busy and she’s grieving. Her romance with Roger is muddied by their history, but also by the questioning “do you look back?” I think it’s difficult for her to stop and to question that on her own because she’s a smart, cool artist and advocate for artists, and that’s her job, and that’s her objective. She’s not wasting time thinking about a dude. No.
Movie Images from ‘Love Brooklyn’
Reggie Ponder, The Reel Critic: What did you leave on the cutting floor that you really liked but you felt, nah, I guess I don’t need it?
Rachael Holder: I can’t think of what we actually shot that didn’t get in. As this was such an indie film, we didn’t have a ton of film that was just lying around the cutting room. But there was a scene—spoiler alert—we never see the women together in a room, and I wrote a scene with them in a room. And to this day, I kind of regret that we never shot it, that we never got to see those characters together and what happens on those pages. Wow, DeWanda and Nicole—what would that have been to have them in a scene together? What we do with their characters because this isn’t a love triangle. This is about two women deciding whether or not they want to be with this dude. There’s no catfight a-coming. So to see them in a room together and solidify that thought visually and with dialogue was really exciting to me. That’s something that I always wonder, what could that have been?
Reggie Ponder, The Reel Critic: Well, Love Brooklyn as a song still sings. Thank you for speaking with us.
Rachael Holder: Thank you Reggie.
You can check out Reggie’s review here: https://ndigo.com/2025/09/04/love-brooklyn-review/
