To say that 2016 was a whirlwind for Academy Award-winning screenwriter Tarell Alvin McCraney would be an understatement. Five years after the film release of Moonlight, based on McCraney’s play “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,” and four years since taking home the top prize of Best Picture during an unprecedented live television mix-up—McCraney’s ascension from Liberty City, Florida, to Chair of Playwriting at The David Geffen Yale School of Drama, to creating the OWN series “David Makes Man”—now in its second season — has made the MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient a creative force of stage and screen. In his first interview with The Reckoning, McCraney opens up about his queer identity, collaborating with director Barry Jenkins to create a masterpiece, being awkward and reveling in going unnoticed on the street, and reactions to the last 20 minutes of Moonlight, and why some of it, for him, was troubling.

Editor’s Note: The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Reckoning: Can you talk about your journey coming into the fullness of who you are as a Black queer boy growing up in Liberty City, Florida? Do you feel comfortable in the skin that you're in today?

McCraney: Probably more comfortable than I have been, for sure. But, I think that requires agency. I find that I have the privilege now, through a lot of luck and a lot of grace and some space, to do some reevaluating. And so now I can kind of say, yeah, I'm awkward and people find me awkward, and that's okay. I'm okay with that. I'm not the only one that's awkward. I know a lot of people who grew up in circumstances like I did, who are awkward. I think one of the reasons why it was so important for us to do “David Makes Man,” which is a television show we do on the OWN Network, is to talk about that.

I think that it's taken a moment to get here, and I want to see if I can provide more space for more people to get comfortable with themselves. But first, we have to view it as a possibility. First, we have to see it as a possibility. I feel like I've figured out some of that. God only knows. It feels like the very tip of the iceberg. I feel like there's so much more that I haven't uncovered, even about myself and my wants and desires.

The Reckoning: Did you ever dream this big for yourself? Did you ever imagine that you would one day win an Oscar?

McCraney: When you don't understand how those institutions work, sometimes you just don't dream those things for yourself. I did dream of doing work and being engaged with lots of artists that I love and that's a dream come true. I'm very proud that we have an Oscar for Moonlight, particularly because it still feels like such a beautiful testament to working with amazing artists to create a vision. I'm excited about that, but I don't know if I ever dreamt of it. I feel like there's so much more to do. I’m still quite shy. I walk down the street and people don't recognize me, which is great. Many people have come into contact with my work in different ways. Sometimes they don't even connect the dots. Counter Narrative definitely helped with that. I remember when Choir Boy was in Atlanta, they ushered a lot of folks to go see it. And people go, “Oh my God, Choir Boy and Moonlight are connected?” People just don't get it, which is cool. There's no wrong way to engage in the work.

The Reckoning: You have no qualms about centering Black queer folks and Black folks in general, in your work. Why is it important for you to create art that reflects Black queer life?

McCraney: It’s important to reflect on Black lives because I just don't think we get to see it often. Or we didn't get to see it often. And now we have many ways of seeing it, and we're getting many more, which is exciting. I think the question then becomes, what else are we missing? And that's where things start to get exciting. I want to give us a chance to see ourselves in all the possibilities. My process has been and always will be to make the intimate epic.

If you take a look at all the work that I've done, you can see that one moment and how it has reverberated out in many different ways. People are still asking what happened with Chiron and Kevin. I'm not a documentarian and I don't want to just get every moment of every single life. But there are these very intimate, powerful moments that play out in the epic, and that's usually what I go for.

The Reckoning: I want to talk about Kevin and Chiron for a minute. Can you talk about the level of intimacy experienced by these two characters at the end of the film? I recall so many people being disappointed that Kevin and Chiron didn’t kiss in the final moments of Moonlight.

McCraney: Well, there are two things: Artistically, we want to make sure that we pay homage to Barry Jenkins for the last 20 minutes of Moonlight. His genius is always in his ability to put people in a space where things are transmitting that don't necessarily have to be said. He wanted that for Chiron. And when writing the script, you kind of want peace—where a person can have peace and stillness and intimacy. It's not necessarily the void of the physical; they're in physical proximity to them. I think the scarier thing is that people immediately jumped to the physical as intimacy. To me, if I can be in a room with you for an hour and not say anything, and we're just there together, that's probably the most intimate thing I can do with you, because that means that I'm not trying to figure out who you are. That means I'm not trying to make noise to distract us. There's nothing in between. Just us. There is no diffuser.

I think Barry just made sure that this young man who had no peace had peace for once. And that is so profound. And again, we are where we are at that moment. Some of us need only understand the physical. Hey, you’re fine. I'm fine. Let's get to it. And that makes us connected in some way. My question to them is, and then what? After that, what would they be chasing after? But to be able to sit in that moment, which felt like an eternity. In my mind, that's where they still are. And I wish that for them. Where are those spaces for us? Can it just be you and that person, and it be good?

When I saw it [the ending of Moonlight], and Barry will tell you, he asked me how I felt about it. And I was like, this is how the film needs to end. Particularly, because if you’re Chiron, and ten years ago you [the character Kevin] punched me in the face, you humiliated me in front of a whole group of people to save face after we had the most tender moment together. What makes people think that my first instinct is to rush back into a room with said person and then take all my clothes off and engage in the physical? It was staggering to me how many people were like, “Oh yeah, that's cool that he punched you that many times—go have sex with him.” I want to talk about that. I want to talk about how many of us are sitting around romanticizing our abusers. I’m not a prude. But is it that easy? And if it is, I just want to understand more.

I loved some of the reactions. This is bringing up some questions we need to talk about in terms of violence in proximity to our intimacy, and to our sexuality, and to our sexual expression, which seems okay to a lot of folks.

The Reckoning: It wasn’t lost on me that when Chiron was released from juvenile detention, he was sent to Atlanta. For many Black queer folks, Atlanta has become a place of refuge. Was this an intentional choice for the character? And what connection, if any, do you have to Atlanta?

McCraney: My family is from Milledgeville, Georgia. My mom’s people are there. So when Barry wrote that sort of turn, that he goes to Atlanta from juvie, it felt like to me honoring… we get in trouble in Miami, in the city, you go to Georgia, and vice versa. I don't think it was deeper than that. I wish it were. I think the connectivity of those cities is so just familiar to us, or at least that's the way I interpreted it.

The Reckoning: Do you feel any pressure to be all things to Black queer men, and to represent us because there are so few artistic pieces out in the world that represent us in our fullness and truth?

McCraney: I don't feel that. And the reason I don't feel that is because Black queer people, particularly men, will remind you that you don't represent all of them and that they contain multitudes.

The Reckoning: When you look back on the epic year that was Moonlight —ending with the shocking moment at the Academy Awards when La La Land was announced as the winner of Best Picture, and then it was revealed that Moonlight was the actual winner. Can you sum up that year?

McCraney: I wish. I might have to sit and write that down. Some of it is starting to fade, but the things that are at the top of my mind are just being shuttled around cities with Barry [Jenkins] eating in the car. Having these really quick conversations and getting to know Barry for the first time. To be on this ride, of people hyping this up, or for audiences clamoring to see more like it — we felt like we'd won. At least I did. And when we did get the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, we both were sitting there like this is amazing. And so Best Picture coming through was like, wow, that's dope. I still remember there was some Academy Award member just sort of dragging me around and trying to get me to the right place because everything was so panicked that night. I don't know that I can distill the entirety of that time.