From Tip Drill to Female Empowerment: How Executive Producers Jami Gertz and Cole Brown Tackled Magic City: An American Fantasy

From musicians to athletes to rising actors and even politicians, Magic City is a cultural hub for people who want to be seen, spend money, and enjoy themselves. Referenced in a rap song and featured on Starz’s BMF, it was only a matter of time the place of legendary stories finally told its own. Magic City: An American Fantasy begins as Michael Barney’s dream that transforms into a hypnotic, otherworldly experience, immersing viewers in the club’s allure—a high-end strip club for the city’s emerging Black middle class.

For Executive Producer Jami Gertz, her journey to Magic City: An American Fantasy started with Jermaine Dupri’s memoirs and the Atlanta Hawks. “It came about from me moving to Atlanta about eight years ago and meeting the first people we were in the NBA with there, the Atlanta Hawks basketball team. The first people to introduce themselves to us and extend themselves were Guju and Mikey Barney and Lil Meech. They were the first people to say, “Welcome. If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to give us a call. We’re around.” I knew no one, and that meant a great deal to me, and I didn’t even know what business they were in. I had no clue. I met Mr. Magic, their father—what a gentleman—and then [Series Creator Cole Brown], who went to school with my son Nicholas, was writing Jermaine Dupri’s memoirs,” said Gertz.

For series creator Cole Brown, he was inspired “by just the magnitude of the cultural impact of this place, and it felt like it just had so many layers that we discovered along the way. One thing about telling this story was that there wasn’t a book that we could go to that already had the story prepackaged that we then just had to retell. So much of this was journalistic. It was a discovery. It was talking to people and saying, “Wait a second, that sounds crazy. Let’s chase that down.” And what you’re left with at the end of that and at the end of a five-part series is an institution and a family that have shaped hip-hop culture internationally for the last 40 years. It’s like an iceberg; we had the tip of it. We knew there was something interesting there, but then once you really get into it, and once you get into these five episodes, I think what you’ll discover is that it is way more massive and impactful than even we really conceived,” said Brown.

When Magic City opened, Mr. Magic was the DJ, bartender, promoter, and security… And there was only one dancer. But as the club became more famous, through sheer grit and determination, so did the dancers. But beyond the glitz and music, the docuseries dives into the stark dualities of this era—unveiling the dangers faced by dancers. Magic City soon spiraled into lawlessness as DJs, bartenders, and dancers ran their own side hustles, each believing they were bigger than the club.

“When we talked to these women, we really wanted to begin by listening. We talked to the women about what’s important about this experience, and like so many of the [stories], a lot of it is unexpected. We’re learning about how the money is broken down. ‘Okay, the XYZ rapper comes in and throws $100,000; what happens next?’ It turns out that’s just an industry practice that is really important, and we had to talk about it. [We] also had to talk about the much larger significant issues as they relate to questions of agency in this space and questions of violence in this space, and we really wanted to not be fearful to dive into all of that as well, because that’s really important. So many women speak incredibly powerfully about how they experience their kind of agency on this stage and in a space where they are often observed but also feel as though they are empowered,” said Brown.

Magic City dancer Whyte Chocolate began to make waves, catching Nelly’s attention and landing in the now-infamous “Tip Drill” video, sparking a national debate on respectability and objectification. While some Spelman graduates believed dancers lost all agency to their bodies, legendary dancer Whyte Chocolate set a new tone that afforded women the opportunity to boss up and hustle. By leveraging her platform to build a personal brand and achieve financial independence, women began to redefine empowerment and challenge the assumption that Black women are powerless within the club space.

It was important the series focused on not just different points of view but the evolution of sexuality and ownership, even if mindsets conflict throughout the decades. “I was amazed that practically every dancer we reached out to wanted to speak on camera, and that says something about their time at Magic City. What I loved about this storytelling is that we’re telling it from a perspective in 1985, and we’re telling it from a perspective of tonight. If you go tonight, you will see people who are in the documentary who are dancing there. So, everyone wanted to talk about their time at Magic City and what it has meant to them and what it currently means to them. I think that is a testament to the place that is Magic City,” said Gertz.

To learn more about Jami Gertz and Cole Brown’s approach to the series, check out our full interview above. Magic City: An American Fantasy releases on Starz on August 15th. Check out our interview Executive Producer Jermiane Dupri and Director Charles Todd.