Candice Patton Talks About Portraying An Interracial Relationship on The Flash

Courtesy of Nerdist, we have a clip of the Fangirling episode with Candice Patton, who plays Iris West on The Flash! Fangirling is a lifestyle/talk show hybrid series that takes on the latest pop culture news. They are all about female empowerment and invite everyone to nerd out over science and culture, talk about what matters, learn new things, and highlight strong ladies in entertainment. You can find Fangirling on the Alpha digital streaming platform.

I can really relate when Candice Patton says she wishes a show like this was a round when she was younger as I have often thought the same thing while watching The Flash. Iris is relatable as a black woman and as a certain type of black woman that we rarely saw on TV before.

With so much emphasis on the significance of a black women being cast as Iris West, the fact that she is also part of an interracial relationship kind of gets lost but it is also very important in terms of representation. The Flash season 4 shows us Barry and Iris trying their best to settle into married life (albeit with very relatively little screen time for their fabulous loft, Barry's Christmas gift to Iris during season three). This is part of the reason why I was, and am, so heated about the way the Westallen wedding was treated. Barry and Iris also failed to have the perfect honeymoon in Bali they so richly deserved!

People also need to see healthy interracial relationships normalized- both because they are a fact of life and because there are a lot of folks who wouldn't consider them because they seem so different from everything we've been exposed to. Black women, I think, are particularly prone to have this blind spot because of our- well, our particular history. However, we might have the most to gain from at least being more open-minded about it. Anyway, here is Queen Candice below!

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