Amy Sherald: I’m so nervous to talk to you.
James Ransome: I can’t do it. I’m sorry.
Sherald: You bought the house for $150,000 and the neighborhood was gentrified and now the house is worth $2 million.
Ransome: Yeah. But still, to this day, I’m a huge John Carpenter fan. I hate watching myself in anything.
Sherald: That’s especially true for the individual portraits.
•••
Ransome: Living the dream, you know?
Sherald: For me, it comes when I’m living—just being on the subway and turning and seeing somebody.
Ransome: You would walk down the aisles and look at all of the boxes, and you could only go by the cover art.
Sherald: Presentation became everything. Luckily it worked out.
Ransome: Why is violence so acceptable?
•••
Sherald: Even when that’s translated to color, I don’t like conflict.
Ransome: No, nothing scary. No, no, no, no.
Sherald: I still get anxiety thinking about it.
Ransome: I hope my next movie is a rom-com or something like that.
Sherald: Especially with this show, I had this idea of a playground and I was trying to find something that worked but instead I landed on an image of a person walking with a surfboard.