Back in the Chair

Returning to a creative family, and carrying both the work and the life inside it.

I’m writing this from Toronto, where I am directing the Season 3 finale of CROSS.

I’ve directed on CROSS across all three seasons, so returning to the series at this moment carries a particular weight. A finale is not simply another episode in the order. It is where the season gathers itself. It is where storylines begin to answer for what they have set in motion, where characters meet the consequences of their choices, where tension either finds release or becomes something more dangerous.

You are not just directing what happens next. You are directing what the season has been building toward.

That requires a different kind of attention.

A finale has to land what needs to land without flattening the mystery that keeps a world alive. It has to satisfy the audience without over-explaining the journey. It has to honor the emotional labor of the writers, actors, crew, producers, showrunner, studio, and network, while still making room for the scene in front of you to breathe.

That kind of responsibility is serious. It’s also the kind of work I love.

There is something meaningful about being invited back into a world again and again. It means the work has spoken. It means people have seen how you think, how you prepare, how you lead, how you collaborate, how you protect story, and how you carry pressure without letting it swallow the room.

That is not luck.

That is relationship, reputation and craft meeting opportunity, then proving it can be trusted with more.

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I have written before about how some stories require us to become the person capable of telling them, and I feel that in my directing life too. Every set has shaped me. Every episode has taught me something. Every challenge has given me another tool. The work has been working on me while I have been working on it.

I have also been thinking about the things we carry while we work, and not just the creative work. The life work.

I think many women will understand this immediately. We carry our entire selves - our bodies, our families, our relationships, our grief, our responsibilities, our private questions, our physical, emotional and hormonal changes, and the needs of the people who depend on us.

We can be directing a scene, solving a production problem, answering an actor’s question, watching the light change, deciding where the camera should go, and still be carrying an entire private life inside our bodies.

I want to write more about this.

To my Substack community, thank you for reading, subscribing, commenting, sharing, encouraging me, and cheering me on as The Director’s Notebook continues to grow. There is so much I want to write, teach, share, and build here.

But when I am not posting every day, know this: I am back in the chair.

Right now, the chair is in Toronto, and the episode is the Season 3 finale of CROSS!

I cannot wait for you to see what we are making.

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Stacey Muhammad is a writer, director, and daughter of New Orleans. Her lens is committed to the cinematic testimony of Black life and the unyielding brilliance of the Southern imagination. From her upcoming feature film, The Return, to her directing work on series including Amazon Prime’s CROSS, Queen Sugar, Power Book III: Raising Kanan, and Harlem, she tells stories where Black people are the architects of the narrative, not the scenery. She is the creator of The Director’s Notebook, a digital film school and creative sanctuary for those reclaiming their birthright through craft and truth.

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