Khaliah Neal | Part One

How Khaliah’s Gentle Leadership allows her to flourish past different producers

Excited to kick off a new year, new decade, with the marvelous and inspiring Khaliah Neal!

She is an independent producer and a graduate of Howard University with a BA in Broadcast Journalism.

In Part One, she reveals how she hustled her way into an internship at Michael Moore’s production company, a leap that catapulted her to where she is today… even if at the time it didn’t seem like it. She dishes on earning her stripes working at the Weinstein Company (pre-MeToo movement) and the wealth of knowledge she gained from her time at Jean Doumanian Productions and Focus Features.

She eventually left the world of prominent production companies behind to make her own movies.

At the time of this recording, she was finishing up The Last Black Man in San Francisco alongside Plan B and A24, which premiered in competition at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The film won the Grand Jury Awards for Best Direction and Best Creative Collaboration and is in theaters now.

She’s a busy bee. She’s got an array of film, TV, and documentary projects on her plate. Previously, she served as Alternative Marketing and Outreach Manager on the Oscar-nominated documentary Trouble the Water, about Hurricane Katrina, and was a Field Producer on the Sundance and Oscar shortlisted documentary, 3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets that addresses Florida's controversial Stand Your Ground law via the Jordan Davis murder trial.

She also produced 25 to Life, a Ford Foundation and Sundance Lab-supported documentary feature that delves into HIV/AIDS in the black community. The film premiered at the 2014 American Black Film Festival and won the CNN Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary.

Khaliah has also produced shorts for Refinery29 and TNT's Shatterbox anthology series that aims to empower women filmmakers. She lent her talents to X, the directorial debut of actress Yara Shahidi, and French Fries, the directorial debut of acclaimed showrunner Janine Sherman Barrios.

It’s an incredible program, and I was lucky enough to be a part of it. I produced Curated, directed by the lovely Gillian Jacobs.

While she’s worked on very impressive projects with fancy people, what I loved about Khaliah is her calm demeanor, which is not a typical personality trait for us producer types. Yet. She steers her ship with an infectious kindness, resilience, and integrity. It’s a beautiful thing.

Up next, she’s producing P-Valley with Chernin Entertainment. The series was created by award-winning playwright Katori Hall and tells the story of four women who happen to be pole dancers in a small town in Mississippi.

KHALIAH IS ON FIRE!

Tune in!

xx cg

p.s. Check out Part Two of our convo :p

“This entire process of which movies are made... I just had no idea how hard it is, and how movies are not actually made; they are actually forced into existence.”

-Khaliah Neal

Episode Transcript