When Zuri Adele first learned about her character's newest romantic developments, she had an immediate positive reaction. The actress told us, "Our showrunner, Joanna Johnson, reached out with me to check in with me about writing that into Malika's storyline, and I was really excited about that."

This new route also aligned with Adele's personal interests and is another example of her identity intersecting with Malika's. Adele shared, "As a millennial queer person, polyamory is something that is very interesting to me ... and the idea of consensual non-monogamy is something that is interesting to me, so I'm really excited that we're putting that on TV and breaking down all the binaries."

Adele also addressed how media tends to make assumptions about polyamory and non-monogamy that can feel reductive. "Most of the times where I've seen something that highlights polyamory in the past, it has been more so about a sexual experience of a threesome, for a man to fetishize being with two women, or something that's particularly more of a white experience," she explained. "It's been really cool to be a part of this millennial, Black experience where it's normalized that, 'Oh yeah, this guy Dyonte has a primary partner.' We're using this vocabulary."