‘WORKING,’ MR. PRESIDENT?
Obamas’ Netflix docuseries spotlights Pittsburgh
Barack and Michelle Obama just can’t get enough of Pittsburgh these days, at least through a cinematic lens. Higher Ground Productions, founded by the former president and first lady in 2018, is behind Netflix’s Bayard Rustin biopic “Rustin” that was partially filmed in Pittsburgh almost two years ago and is set to be released later this year.
Last week, Netflix dropped all four episodes of the Higher Ground docuseries “Working: What We Do All Day,” which is narrated by Barack Obama and aims to uncover what “work” entails and means to folks on every rung of society.
“Working” follows Americans at four levels — “service jobs,” “the middle,” “dream jobs” and “the boss” — in three cities. One of the companies featured in “Working” happens to be Pittsburgh-based autonomous vehicle startup Aurora Innovation. Obama even showed up here to interview two Aurora employees about their socioeconomic situations and the space work occupies in their lives.
“He doesn’t require much direction because he’s kind of the master of knowing what he wants to say and how he wants to say it,” director Caroline Suh told the PostGazette. “It’s a little bit intimidating, obviously. But I think we reached some sort of good back- and- forth communication through working on the series.”
When Suh was approached about making a docuseries about work, her first thought was, “Who wants to watch that?” She signed on after learning about the Obamas’ involvement and began figuring out the most interesting ways to visualize the abstract concept. That led her to identify the “various sectors of the future” that “Working” would focus on: tech, hospitality and home care.
The series examines the on-the-job environments at Aurora, New York City’s Pierre Hotel and At Home Care Inc. in Mississippi. The first episode co-stars Uber Eats delivery driver and part-time makeup artist Carmen Smith of Pittsburgh. Subsequent installments include musician and Aurora data manager Luke Starcher; now-former Aurora senior robotics engineer Karthik Lakshmanan; and Aurora co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson.
While searching for areas and companies to highlight, Suh said it helped that “Pittsburgh is home to all this new tech coming up.” This region’s unique topography and the fact so many Pittsburghers live relatively far from their jobs also factored into why the Steel City was selected for “Working.”
“Pittsburgh is an interesting city that reflects these kinds of challenges, depending on what part of the workforce you’re in,” Suh said.
As she put it, “automation is on everyone’s minds right now” in terms of assessing what jobs will even still be available in the future. With that in mind, Suh surmised that it may be prudent for “Working” to bring on a local gig-economy worker like Smith before diving into the lifestyles of employees at a self-driving car company. A section of the docuseries’ first episode follows Smith as she drives around Pittsburgh making Uber Eats deliveries — including to Aurora headquarters.
“She had really great energy,” Suh said. “You always want someone who is philosophical, smart and can kind of reflect on things. Carmen was all those things.”
The second episode transitions to what middle-class work looks like in 2023. In Pittsburgh, that idea was represented by Starcher, a 34-year-old Troy Hill resident
who enjoys his day job at Aurora while indulging his passion for music in his free time. Suh “really appreciated his commitment to the city,” which Starcher corroborated in a separate interview with the Post-Gazette.
“I definitely didn’t realize that I was going to be one of the focal points of the middle, so to speak,” he said. “But I’m not mad about it. ... I genuinely love Pittsburgh. I wanted to rep Pittsburgh as best as possible, and I think that comes through.”
Starcher was tapped by Aurora to appear in “Working” soon after the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020. He clicked with Suh right away and had a lot of fun filming his segments that spanned from summer 2020 to May 2022. Though he was a little nervous about how he would be portrayed, he had no qualms about the scenes in which he appeared and feels “the project overall is unbelievably amazing.”
His storyline gave Suh the chance to shoot a lot of Pittsburgh as it showed Starcher in Aurora’s Strip District offices, driving through his childhood neighborhood and getting a crash course in the local housing market. Obama eventually visits his Troy Hill home and sits down in his basement recording studio for a chat. Starcher still can’t believe he got to play Obama a rough cut of what turned out to be the fourth track on his band Calvin & Cletus’ recently released selftitled album.
“He was the nicest, most chill person,” Starcher said. “We seemed to connect instantly, which I think the show shows as well. The depiction of what happened between us was pretty straightforward.”
Ultimately, “Working” offers viewers a glimpse into how work manifests itself for just about every category of modern American — and yinzer.
“[Pittsburgh] is a place that has a ton of history that’s really important in American history,” Suh said. “There’s so much diversity now, and it’s great to see a city turning itself around. There are issues ... like gentrification and loss of neighborhoods.
“There’s a layered, important story going on in Pittsburgh.”