Diggy Simmons Talks Grown-ish’s “Nuanced” Take on BLM Protests

For Diggy Simmons, Grown-ish is much more than a TV show.

As he explained during E! News’ Ones to Watch: Celebrating Black Voices, the Freeform series doesn’t gloss over real-life issues like racism, police brutality and mental health struggles, but instead, approaches them in a way that allows the show to “serve as therapy” for viewers.

Take, for example, Grown-ish‘s recent recreation of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests, which Simmons described as “beautiful” and “nuanced,” especially with regards to his character Doug, who was hesitant to engage with the movement and was ultimately dubbed “a bad Black person” by Kiella (Daniella Perkins).

“My responsibility that I felt was most important was that my heart was in the right place,” Simmons said. “There’s a lot of people who experience what Doug was experiencing in that script, but in real time…Seeing all of these different elements of the script, I just wanted to make sure that it was genuine emotion coming through and that I was placing myself somewhere internally to where that can come across on screen and people could be able to connect.”