New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
The storyteller
BRIDGEPORT PRODUCER CREDITS HIS COMMUNITY AS INSPIRATION
Growing up, Tamir Muhammad didn’t have a lot of access to film. His family didn’t have cable and they couldn’t afford to go to the movies. But that didn’t stop him from becoming a film producer — if anything it inspired him to use film to lift up stories from the Black community. “I had to rely a lot on just my imagination,” said Muhammad about his childhood. Muhammad is now a successful film producer who has worked on series such as HBO’s “Random Acts of Flyness,” and his production company signed exclusive first-look deals with Warner Bros. Pictures, HBO and HBO Max earlier this month.
Born a storyteller, Muhammad was always doing creative projects, whether it was writing short stories or poetry. His early inspirations for stories came from growing up at his mom’s day care business. Known in the neighborhood as “Miss Jeannie,” Muhammad’s mom ran a day care out of their home in Bridgeport’s East End neighborhood.
“I learned so much about what struggles people were having and my stories come from it,” said Muhammad. When working mothers couldn’t afford or were struggling to pay for daycare, his mom would let them pay as much as they could afford, he shared. An additional perk of growing up in day care was that Muhammad could always count on having new cast members for the plays he would put on there.
Muhammad’s first exposure to film came when he enrolled in an elective filmmaking course at Central Magnet High School. During the course, he discovered his love for storytelling through a camera.
“[The class] opened the world for me,” said Muhammad. That year, he won a national competition that promoted anti-smoking with a short scripted film.
Shortly after, his high school counselor showed him a pamphlet about a weekend program at New York University for high school students and encouraged him to apply. While the program was intended only for New York students and the school was worried that he wouldn’t attend all the sessions, Muhammad convinced them to accept him and never missed a class.
One of the producer’s earliest inspirations was Spike Lee, who is an alumnus and professor at NYU. Witnessing a filmmaker who looked like him at a renowned New York school made Muhammad believe his dream was possible. While the famed producer has been an inspiration for Muhammad, he never wanted to simply imitate Lee’s success.
“I remember when I was little people would tell me ‘you’re going to be the next Spike Lee,’ and I felt like it was important for me to not be the next Spike Lee but to be the first Tamir Muhammad,” he said. After the program, Muhammad decided he wanted to make filmmaking a career and went to NYU for college.
Being at the prestigious film program at NYU opened many doors to the industry, he said. One of those opportunities was doing an internship with Tribeca Entreprises under the guidance of co-founder Jane Rosenthal, who played an important role in Muhammad’s success in the industry.
“She wasn’t afraid to open the door and put me in positions that most people my age would not have gotten...she asked for my opinion and she gave me responsibilities that most interns don’t get,” said Muhammad, who added that he now tries to be that person for other people.
Before Muhammad graduated college, the tragic terrorist attack on the World Trade Center shocked New York and the world; the film industry was heavily affected by it as well. Muhammad went on to work again with Rosenthal when she was launching the Tribeca Film Festival in 2002, founded alongside Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff, as a way to revitalize lower Manhattan after the attacks on Sept. 11.
During his time with Tribeca Enteprise, Muhammad worked as vice president of content development as well as vice president of film, TV and online programming for the Tribeca Film Institute. One of many projects that Muhammad oversaw was “The Power of Words,” a project for which five filmmakers were given a Nelson Mandela quote, and they turned them into a short film.
“[I built] a reputation in the industry of being a ‘tastemaker’ but also someone who wasn’t afraid to make the bet. Somebody who wasn’t afraid to sort of go into an office and tell another executive ‘this person, this project, you need to pay attention to’,” said Muhammad. The producer moved on to work for Warner Media’s OneFifty where he participated in the incubation of projects that would later be position in the company’s divisions, Warner Bros., HBO and Turner. One of those resulted in the creation of HBO’s “Random Acts of Flyness,” which won a Peabody in 2019.
In 2018, Muhammad decided to take a new career step and opened his own production company, Populace. Since its start, the company has had multi-year television production and first-look deals with HBO and HBO Max, according to Deadline. Earlier this month, a new collaboration was announced that will extend those deals and also include a new deal with Warner Bros.
Muhammad credits his work ethic to his parents and his successes to his his family. Drawing from his experiences in Bridgeport, the film producer’s goal is to produce content that pushes boundaries and shows representation with characters “in a world bigger than themselves,” he said.
“I’m not in this industry for the ‘Hollywood’ of it all. I’m in it for the people who look like me, for people who look like all of us from towns like Bridgeport,” said Muhammad, who divides his time between New York and Los Angeles. “At the end of the day, with one story, one movie, one TV show, you can affect and impact millions around the world.”