Client: Paramount Pictures
Role: creative development, production, post-production
**2022 The Podcast Academy Ambies Award Winner: Best Politics or Opinion Podcast**
**2022 The Podcast Academy Ambies Award Winner: Best Society & Culture Podcast**
**2022 The Podcast Academy Ambies Award Nominee: Best Interview Podcast**
**2022 Webby Award Winner: Best Television & Film Podcast**
**2021 NY Festival Radio Awards, Bronze Medal: Best Companion Podcasts**
Billie Was a Black Woman is an Audible Original podcast refracting Black womanhood through the prism of the life of legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday – her stories, her music, and her complicated legacy. In each episode, the podcast’s renowned creator, writer, and host Rebecca Carroll dives into different facets of Billie’s life, exploring what it means to defy the narrow categorizations thrust upon Black artists, Black bodies, and Black womanhood today.
The four episode exploration of Black womanhood through the life and lens of Billie Holiday + an additional special episode celebrating her legacy in the work of Black creatives will also feature an incredible array of Black creators and activists, including Andra Day and Lee Daniels (the star and director of the new movie The United States vs. Billie Holiday), as well as Dr. Angela Davis, Laverne Cox, Mariah Carey, and more.
Billie Was a Black Woman is produced by Spoke Media in collaboration with Paramount Pictures and launched exclusively on Audible and Amazon Music on Billie’s birthday, April 7th, 2021.
Rebecca Carroll is a writer, creative consultant, editor-at-large, and host of the podcast Come Through with Rebecca Carroll: 15 essential conversations about race in a pivotal year for America (WNYC Studios). Most recently, she was a cultural critic at WNYC, where she also developed a broad array of multi-platform content, and a critic-at-large for the Los Angeles Times. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Essence, the Guardian and New York Magazine, among numerous other publications, and she is the author of several books about race in America, including the award-winning Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America. Her latest book, Surviving the White Gaze: A Memoir, has been optioned by MGM Studios and Killer Films with Rebecca attached to adapt and executive produce for TV.