Diarra Kilpatrick on TV detectives, Eminem and filming 'Diarra From Detroit' in New Jersey

During a visit home last week, Diarra Kilpatrick made a point to stop and get her picture taken in front of the mural for her new show, "Diarra From Detroit," which decorates a two-story brick wall outside the Detroit Barber Co. on Michigan Avenue in Corktown.

It represents a major victory for the star, writer and creator of the new series, which is named for her hometown, where her half-brother Kwame was once mayor. The comic-mystery series debuts Thursday on BET+ and marks the culmination of a decade-plus journey for Kilpatrick, who tried to get three different series off the ground before "Diarra From Detroit" took hold.

"It was a moment," says Kilpatrick, on a Zoom call this week, of when she visited the mural, which depicts her hanging her head outside the window of a car, a Black Cement Air Jordan 3 dangling from the driver's side mirror. "I was like, 'how do I get this wall?' And I wasn't joking." (She settled for a photo.)

"Diarra From Detroit" stars Kilpatrick as Diarra, a Detroit schoolteacher in the midst of a divorce who gets tangled up in a Motor City mystery when her Tinder crush seemingly vanishes after a successful first date. (That Air Jordan 3 is a clue to his disappearance.) The show is a funny, snappy neo-noir which puts a Black female face on the TV detective series, the kinds of shows Kilpatrick grew up watching with her grandmother.

"I watched 'Perry Mason' and 'Columbo' with my granny, and I think that structure is in my bones," says Kilpatrick who, in a serendipitous twist, also starred on HBO's recent revival of "Perry Mason." "Even though they're White shows, because of my grandmother's commentary on them, she made them Black shows."

Kilpatrick, 40, used her grandmother's running witticisms as inspiration, weaving the kinds of things she would say into other characters' mouths when writing "Diarra." "If my grandmother was sitting on the couch going, 'heifer, come on,' that line can actually go in the show, and (Diarra's) friends can serve as the people who are normally on the couch yelling at the show."

Kilpatrick also gets the pronunciation of her first name — it's Dee-arr-a, and yes, she was teased about it growing up — out of the way early in the first episode, when her character explains "my name is African and it is beautiful!" when someone tells her it auto-corrects to, well, you know what.

"I always say I have a Senegalese name with a Detroit pronunciation," she says, noting her name is, in its original form, pronounced Jara. "My mom got it out of this African naming book, and my dad, the first time he saw it written down, he said, 'uh-oh, it kind of looks like diarrhea,' and my mother cried. But they didn't change it, and I love my name, although I have been subject to a diarrhea joke or two in my life. It gave me character and it gave me clap backs."

Kilpatrick got bitten by the acting bug when in 4th grade at Detroit's Bates Academy she played the role of Dorothy in "The Wiz," a role which was given to her by her teacher, after Kilpatrick sang in her school's Christmas production the year prior. That gave her an enormous amount of confidence and pride.

Then when she was 12 she performed in a production at Meadow Brook Theatre, and one of the leads in the play to whom she looked up was a graduate of NYU, which set her path to New York and her trajectory of acting and performing. While at NYU — which is where she met her husband, Miles Orion Feldsott, whom she married in 2015 — she began writing as well, and she wrote and performed a one-woman show her senior year. She moved to Los Angeles after college to pursue acting and started appearing in small roles on shows like "House" and "Private Practice."

Kilpatrick, who says she draws inspiration from actresses such as Whoopi Goldberg and Viola Davis, wrote and starred in "American Koko," a web series which took a satirical look at race in America and was also imbued with the DNA of detective shows. "Koko" — which started as a YouTube series in 2014 and eventually moved to ABC's web platforms — earned Kilpatrick an Emmy nomination and several pilot opportunities, including shows at Prime Video and Showtime. But when those didn't pan out (and her heartbreak subsided), Kilpatrick created "Diarra," which was picked up for a full season on the strength of its pilot script alone. (Kenya Barris, creator of "black-ish," is an executive producer, along with Kilpatrick's husband.)

With "Diarra," which also stars Morris Chestnut as Diarra's ex- and Phylicia Rashad as the mother of the missing man, Kilpatrick wanted each episode to play out like a movie. And each of those movies needs a good "dinner party story," the type of involving narrative you'd spin in front of friends and hold them on the edges of their seats.

Then there's a clue chain dispersed throughout the show, building toward the resolution of the central mystery, in this case, what happened to Diarra's Tinder date? (It turns out he may be the same boy who went missing from an area mall 30 years ago, a case that recalls the real life story of D'Wan Sims, who disappeared from Wonderland Mall in 1994.)

"Diarra From Detroit" — which also features Detroit rappers Kash Doll and Icewear Vezzo, as well as former Pistons star John Salley — is sprinkled with local references: east side/ west side rivalries, businesses like Avalon Bakery, cities like Grosse Pointe and Royal Oak and artists like the Temptations, who are the subject of a couple of lewd jokes in episode three.

In the series opener, Diarra raps Eminem's "Kill You" — "I like tapping into White male anger when I'm having a bad day," she says in voiceover — a clearance that came from the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer at the 11th hour.

"That piece is 100% autobiographical, so it was important for me to have," Kilpatrick says of the song, from 2000's "The Marshall Mathers LP." "I will say shout out to Eminem because I wrote him a letter about how I used to scream along to that song and how much that album meant to me, and he came through in a big way."

Michigan, unfortunately, was unable to come through for the production, and the lack of tax incentives meant this very Detroit-centric series had to shoot in New Jersey, in towns like Patterson and Newark, where the crew did its best to replicate the look and feel of Detroit. (Some B-roll and pickup shots of the city are inserted into the show.)

"It is very cost-prohibitive for us to shoot in Detroit without a tax credit," Kilpatrick says. "I really am hopeful (Michigan's film incentive program) comes back, because not only does it bring a lot of money and jobs to the city, but it also showcases things you don't even think about, like street art, and it helps us put the special sauce of the city into the show."

Kilpatrick says Kwame has seen "Diarra From Detroit" — "he's supportive of me and he loves me, and he's excited that people finally get to see what I made my family sit through when I was younger, which is a whole lot of singing and dancing," she says — and she's excited to, through the series, shine a different kind of light on Detroit.

"I do like the idea of sharing my version of Detroit to the world," she says. "Yes, of course, it honors the fact that Detroit can be dangerous, and Detroit can have an aggressive masculine energy. But most of the people that I know are teddy bear-soft on the inside and are much more complicated than that.

"I also want people to have a good time, and I have nostalgia for these highly entertaining procedural shows. This one is edgier, it's sexier, it's raunchier — it's definitely an adult show — but I want people to talk to their friends at brunch or call their friends and say, 'I think she should go back with the husband!'" she says. "I love when people get involved in storytelling that way, and if I can reveal the humanity of Detroiters in the process? I feel like I've won."

agraham@detroitnews.com

'Diarra From Detroit'

TV-MA

Starts Thursday on BET+