Meet Nikka Troy, a Spring 2021 Senior Fellow
Nikka Troy will be doing community reporting work in New Orleans this spring as part of the Lede New Orleans fellowship program.
By Forest Gaines Jr.
Nikka Troy has always been at home around the camera. Troy, a New Orleans native and University of New Orleans graduate, was in 8th grade when she started auditioning for acting roles on TV and in film. But she discovered her love for working behind the camera in 2016 after spending a month studying film in Montpellier, France.
Troy switched her concentration at UNO from theater to film later that year and months later published her first self-directed work: a short documentary about artist John Isiah Walton for ViaNolaVie.
“I just love the full process of creating a form of visual art,” Troy said.
Troy, 26, is determined to change the way we tell stories about non-white people and characters on screen. It’s not only about getting more Black, Latinx and Asian faces in films; documentarians and filmmakers also need to push back against typecasting and diversify the types of stories that center people of color, she said.
In addition to writing her own screenplays, Troy produces narrative features, documentary works and web series with Girls In Color, a multimedia production company she co-founded. She’s also an associate producer for TuckerGurl, a local production company founded by Angela Tucker and Iyesatu Chari focused on telling compelling stories about underrepresented communities.
Troy served as a Lede New Orleans reporting fellow in last spring, documenting a local educator and actor in COVID-19 quarantine as well as her experience protesting racial injustice and police brutality last summer. As a returning Lede New Orleans Senior Fellow, Troy is interested in digging deeper into documentary journalism.
What led you to film work?
I’ve been a performer since I was three. And I started acting professionally when I was in 8th grade. I was always a writer. I was writing plays and I really got into screenplay writing, which then led into me really loving film and being a producer in film. For the most part now, I produce narrative films.
What do you like about doing documentary work?
It’s being involved in the full process. In film, they often tell you to pick a role and stick to it, because they’ll constantly call you for that role. I hate that. I want to learn all the aspects of film and figure out which places I can really fit.
You run a production company. How did that start?
In 2017, I called my friends and said that I really want to do a podcast. Eventually, after a couple of meetings, we realized that since we’re all filmmakers and screenplay writers, we had our own screenplays that we wanted to actually work on. As we came together, we realized that it was a production company. I want to say it was September 12, 2018, when we fully established as a production company. In 2019, we put out our first project, which was called Pajama Girl Talk. It was on Instagram TV and Facebook TV.
What’s your advice for young Black women who are aspiring documentarians and filmmakers?
Women make up 21% of the film industry. And when we talk about women of color, we only make up 9% of the industry. I always tell people that you do have to go about things a little bit different. You do create art, but you do have to think about the way that you create art. You do have to think about the people who you invite into your space, because it is different.
Forest Gaines Jr. is a Lede New Orleans Spring 2021 Fellow. He is a native New Orleanian and a senior studying journalism at the St. John’s University in New York. He aims to pursue journalism after graduating in May 2021.
