Rose Wurgel has been the most compelling figure on FX’s Black White, a reality series in which a black family, The Sparks, and a white family, The Wurgels, moved in together and swapped skin colors to learn what it’s like to move about the world as a person of another ethnicity. For my money, 18 year-old Rose was the only participant whose makeup looked convincing enough to pass. Plus, she appeared to be the one who invested the most emotionally in the project and the one who was ultimately the most transformed by it.
Here, she reflects on her Black White experience.
KW: What were you expecting Black White to be like before you moved into the house and started taping?
RW: I didn’t really know what it was going to be like. I just heard, “It’s a family thing about race in L.A.”
KW: So, why did you agree to participate in the project?
RW: I was interested in seeing where I really had a role in my society in a place that I’ve lived and grown up in since the time I was born.
KW: How was it living with a black family?
RW: The tension rose whenever we were all together, because we all had such diverse personalities. Trying to make anything kind of polite, couldn’t happen.
KW: How would you describe the dynamic?
RW: It was like this emotional, overdramatic, very unique, bizarre Wurgel family versus this really kempt, extra-presentable, very concealed Sparks family.
KW: Do you think your families arrived with different expectations?
RW: The Sparks wanted to find out that racism existed, and my family wanted to show that it wasn’t really different. And it was kind of like I was in the middle going, “Yes! Yes! You’re both right. They both exist. We are different, and we are similar.”
KW: Compared to you, who seemed at ease in blackface, Nick, the Sparks’ teenage son, seemed very uncomfortable when in whiteface.
RW: Nick was not taking on his role as a white boy.
KW: What did that say to you?
RW: That showed me, quickly, that there was a way to be white, to pass as white.
KW: Besides darkening your skin and tying back your hair, what else was involved in transforming yourself into a sister?
RW: First, with my face, I had to completely take off my oils. Then we did the hair. Then we’d apply the nostrils. And we’d do that with glue and fake nostril lining which actually feels incredibly like skin.