KyFx Content Creature Feature

Meet Girl That’s Scary Podcast!

Horror Podcasters 

by Kyasia Fields on July 29

I got a chance to sit and chat with two amazing podcasters , Jazzmin Crawley (Jazz the 40oz Connoisseur) and Kathleeen White (Kat Daddy)  who make up the Horror duo of Girl Thats Scary Podcast. Both hailing from the DMV ; they started their podcast to add more Black voices to the genre.  We got a chance to discuss technological disadvantages from previous interview attempts , the origin of their catchy hashtag #homegirlhorror , Black Trans representation in the genre , 70’s vs 80’s Horror ,  and a plethora of other topics. Check out the full interview below. 

How did y’all meet and come together to make Girl That’s Scary Podcast #homegirlhorror.

(KW) Well, Jazz and I actually met through a mutual friend of ours, and that friend and I met through the people that we were dating at the time, Jazz is the type of person that’s like “Your friends are my friends now,” and I love that aggressive fire sign shit, so it was cool. Ever since then, it has been real squad shit. The idea for us having the podcast was more so with people telling me for a long time “Oh you should do radio, etc., etc. “and one day I was like “Okay I really think this is something I might get in to” and I know you (Me) have the situation where you are by yourself, and I’m still kinda like “eh” about talking to myself, so I brought the idea up to her, and she was with the shits, and here we are. 

So where did the name Girl That’s Scary come from? 

(JC) We were trying to figure out a name, and at first, we were like “Girl that’s Spooky 

(KW) And that’s taken, and we looked it up, and it was something too similar, and I feel like we watched something, and we were like “Girls That’s Scary” then we were like mhmm. Girl, that is scary 

(JC) I was like we could do #homegirlhorror and POW! 

What made y’all fall in love with Horror? 

(JC) Definitely, my family, tagging along with them. I mean my mom really didn’t have a choice, she didn’t have a babysitter, so if she went to go see Scream we all went to see Scream, but I also enjoyed it, so we were both in the theater excited talking about it. She let me pretty much watch anything. I got a big taste of wild Horror. So I can go pretty far. I feel like we watched Horror as young children while some people were watching Hellraiser or Candyman for the first time, now we are revisiting it like “Oh That’s Good.” We remember it from our childhood, but we aren’t terrified of it now because we know this, we are familiar with this work. You have to push it further for us, we need more gore because we have seen everything else. So I’m like, “I’m with it, how far can we take this. ” Well, maybe not too far, because some of these movies take it too far. 

(KW) For me, it was more so watching Nightmare on Elm Street with my mom. My mom was always into Horror before my aunt became a baptized Jehovah’s Witness. She really put me in the International Horror game. She would get the shakiest movies, she would not read the title and just add it to our cart. It just stemmed from there. Watching a lot of Zombie shit, anything that my mom would put on the TV. I wasn’t allowed to watch Beavis and Butthead; instead, I was watching Tales from the Crypt. I was definitely into that. We were watching Twilight Zone. These are my first introductions to Horror. 

How Did it feel growing up watching Black Characters in Horror? What did you see? Was there representation, or the lack thereof? How did that make you feel? 

(JC) I didn’t see much, growing up, of course, if you are watching movies from the ’80s and 90’s even up to the early 2000s, it wasn’t until the early 2000’s that they started putting black people in these films and they might not die. You have a few examples like Jada Pinkett, who was a Black “Final Girl,’ but that was in 95. That was rare, you are not seeing Black “Final Girls” or even any Black people in the films and if they are in the movie you don’t know their names, what they like, what they do, where their momma stays, where their grand momma stays; they just get killed. They are also there to be the sidekick. Why do we always have to have braids or roll our necks and snap our fingers a certain way? Why do we always have to be represented like that? Also, this idea of us doing magic or voodoo. 

(KW) For me, I know I can definitely agree with Jazz. One of the movies that stuck out to me as a kid was A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. I can honestly recall (because my favorite film is Night of the Living Dead and we all know how that ends where George Romero got “accidentally” political and I’ve seen documentaries where they claim he didn’t mean to be) but in Dream Warriors with Kincaid, even though he might have been an “I’m about to beat your ass” Black character, he is also in this mental health facility, they are treating him crazy, he is trying to defend himself, they are not respecting him and treating him wild. On top of that, Freddy is beating everybody ass, you don’t wanna go to sleep, you are tired. It’s so much going on, and I was so happy to see him beat Freddy Kruger’s ass with these powers, but he also made it to the end. Unfortunately, they kill everyone off in the next movie, but that was more so with the director than with the actors. The representation was shaky, I feel the representation now is getting a little better with 1. Seeing more Black people and people of color stepping up to the forefront and creating their own lane while making a name for themselves in the genre. You have some people who are trying to push us to the front. I still think we’ve got some ways to go because we have seen a couple movies recently, and black people are still dying in the first couple minutes, or we are still just throwing away characters, or we live in the hood, making the characters’ overly Black”. I do feel like we are still making some strides.

How do you feel about this new “Renaissance of Black Horror.” 

(JC) I mean, I love it, and I love it because I know it is starting to creek the door open. Cause all they needed was for someone to put their toe in the door, so someone couldn’t close it. Because once you put your foot in the door, they are gonna blow it out the water. Which is what I feel Jordan Peele did. Now the frame is still small, only a few people can fit through the door at a time, and we gotta knock the wall down.I know it’s going to be easy because, for example, when Candyman comes out, I know it’s going to slap! There is no denying the talent of these actors. With what Jordan Peele is doing, it’s like HAHA this is what Black people really are like, and it’s more realistic, and it’s easier for the Black audience to relate to rather than some white writer who wrote some Black character in a script like “here.” 

If you all had to pick between 70’s VS 80’s Horror, Which would you choose? 

(KW) I would definitely choose 70’s 

(JC) Even though I enjoy 70′ movies like Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I love them, and I love the way they look. The ’80s gave me very experimental Science Fiction, body Horror, gross-out Alien installments, it gave me more focus on Sci-Fi. I am a fan of Sci-Fi. I love the gooey shit, the science experiment blowing up in the lab. I love Reanimator. I love body Horror.  

What is your favorite Final Destination, Kill? 

(JC) I saw Final Destination with my mom, of course, and that opening car pile-up scene from the second film still gets me. I am still traumatized. Driving even stresses me out. If there are water bottles in the car, Kat will throw them out, and I always try not to drive behind trucks with logs. 

(KW) I was driving one time, and a water bottle actually rolled up by my foot, and I was like, “I’m ABOUT TO DIE.” 

(JC) That affected me, which affects my life to this day. 

(JC) Individually, I like it when the little boy shoos the birds, and the glass falls on him.

(KW) That scene still gets me because I am afraid of Pigeons, so I knew when the pigeons were coming that he was about to die right then and there. Pigeons are demons. 

(JC) I don’t think I’m afraid of pigeons, I am more scared of mice. I don’t do mice, rodents, bugs that hop, crickets, grasshoppers. 

(KW) My favorite death beside the multi pile-up scene was the ending death that wrapped all the stories up because it was a straight mind fuck for me. On top of the fact that pre-COVID, I would travel at the drop of the dime. And being on a plane, my worst fear is something happening while on that plane. 

What does #homegirlhorror mean to you? 

(JC) It’s really just a Black space for Horror, other people can use the hashtag in support of #homegirlhorror, but it’s for us. It’s like you are in the room with your homegirls and you are like “oh remember when that happened” especially when discussing social aspects of Horror movies because we know about blood, guts, and ass but we also have films like Midsommar where we relate to the main character “like he really broke up with her” 

(KW) They were drinking mushroom tea, so I knew they were gonna die.

(KW) #HomegirlHorror is definitely a space for us. It’s literally down to (and you can listen to episodes of our podcast to understand) whether it’s us by ourselves or with other people. It’s a group discussion with your homegirls or your friends. It’s like the way you would actually watch a movie, even if you don’t talk much during movies, it’s like having a group discussion with people that you are really cool or real tight with. That’s usually how it goes for us and other people that I know as well, even for years with different sets of friends. That’s often how our conversations would go. Still, it also comes down to perspective, because we have a different perspective, we come from a diverse group of people, we see the marginalized view, so we not only have been taught to learn, “okay this is us.” But you need to be better than others, learn what they are doing and be a step above it. We can see the whole picture. I’m not saying I can see you do everything like That’s So Raven, it’s an overall different perspective. 

(JC) It’s a little more relaxed, unlike other podcasts that I’ve heard (that I still enjoy because it’s good to hear something different) but they go through one movie at a time, step by step what happens in these films vs. “Girl have you seen the Alien movie” ,  “Yeah I like it” , “What about this one?”..We are having conversations about the subgenres in the genre rather than breaking down one film piece by piece. 

Which of your podcast episodes is your favorite? 

(KW) I think my favorite episode was the Zombies episode, where we were all in a room with our friends, and we were just chopping it up, having a good time. That was a fun one. I think our Slasher episode too because I’m sure it was the same group of friends. There is one that is coming out soon that I am really excited about. 

(JC) Definitely, the Hulu into The Dark Episode, before we said that we were going to do Hulu Into The Dark, Kat had already explored like 7 of the movies, and I’ve seen like 1, and she kept asking me had I checked out Hulu Into The Dark. I watched a lot of different films through that, and they aren’t even all my favorites, but I’m just like, “wow, that opened a door for me that I wasn’t even gonna open.” I got to explore something new, and now I am looking forward to some of the other films, and of course, I love Going To Hell because I love movies about going to hell. 

Be sure to check out Girl That’s Scary Podcast with new episodes weekly and great content. Streaming on all podcast platforms.  

Website: www.girlthatsscary.com 

Twitter: @Girlthatsscary 

IG: @Girlthatsscary 

Apple podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/girl-thats-scary/id1485449824

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1ItkHf0K2C5tchSzswbA4B?si=ulOLInwNRXWH19CpIuB6Pg

SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/gtspod

Anchor: https://anchor.fm/girl-thats-scary

KyFx Horror Group, LLC .

Houston , TX