Queens team talks making a music video opener capturing 'the lifestyle and champagne' of the Y2K era

Tim Story was presented with a royally epic task: direct a music video fit for four commanding queens. His solution: a no-expense-spared, TRL-worthy visual complete with a coastal locale, a horde of hot backup dancers, an imposing yacht, and an unexplained action-movie-style explosion.

But the video's track, co-produced by Swizz Beatz and featuring Grammy winners Eve and Brandy, wasn't produced to win a VMA. Instead, "Nasty Girl" is the opening scene of ABC's Queens (Tuesdays at 10 p.m.), a new drama about a rap group that was on top of the world at the turn of the millennium. Working on "Nasty Girl" was "my past coming back to me," says Story, who spent the Y2K era directing artists like *NSYNC and Tyrese. Back then, he says, it was all about showcasing "the lifestyle and champagne."

"We were just telling stories. We were using helicopters. We were blowing up stuff that shouldn't be blown up," says the director, who calls the new music video "a love letter to what we used to do back then."

Showrunner Zahir McGhee recalls pitching the vision for the video to Story and hearing his unique feedback. "I really wanted to take classic hip hop videos — hip hop videos that we're used to like 'Big Pimpin' — and turn it on their head where it's the women who are pouring the champagne on the dudes. And they were picking up the men and they had the yachts and the helicopters and all the control," explains the writer. "And so [Tim] really ran with that and a lot of the super added touches. He's like, 'Well, we need pit bulls right?' And I'm like, 'Do we?' And he's like, 'Yeah.' And then he'll come to my office and be like, 'Or should they be rottweilers?'"

"Nasty Girl" first establishes Queens' stars (Brandy, Eve, Naturi Naughton, and Nadine Velazquez) as the Nasty Bitches in their prime, before the episode juxtaposes each member's verse with her more humble life two decades later. "Down to the lyric, where we break and go to present day, that was all on page," notes Story, praising McGhee's precise screenwriting.

The showrunner adds that "every piece of music [we do], if you were to break it down and just read the lyrics, you have learned something about that person." Using Naughton's character as an example, McGhee says, "If you notice, Jill's lines have a lot to do with sinning, saints, God's son —which is both a Nas reference and also referencing her religious background and her upbringing, and what her torture and torment was through all of that. So the show to me is more of a musical than it is a music industry show."

Adding more clarity to how the music video, in particular, was made, choreographer Fatima Robinson says, "We shot the TV show first. And then the song, they realized, could actually become a popular song with Swizz Beatz doing the music for the show. And the girls looked so great in the show that we just took bits of that, and then added more to it and made a music video."

Robinson, whose credits include several videos for Aaliyah and the Black Eyed Peas, explains the seasoned Queens stars already "knew how to work the stage" — she just had to show them steps and "leave room for the girls as actresses to put in their own little flavor."

That manifested in surprising ways. "Sometimes Naturi feels a bit Lil' Kim–ish to me," says Robinson (fitting, since Naughton played the rapper in 2009's Notorious). And Brandy became "a little more hip-hop and raw and gangster," she says. "I'm like, 'Brandy, we're getting introduced to a whole new you, and I love it.' "

As for that explosive "Nasty Girl" moment, with Eve strutting away from a fiery mansion, Story jokes it required little direction: "Nothing really needed to be said. I was like, 'A camera goes here, and then Eve does what she does.' And Eve knew what that meant."

Video courtesy of ABC.

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• Queens creator explains why working on the ABC rap drama has him asking 'What is my f—ing life?'
• Watch Queens stars Brandy, Eve, Naturi Naughton, and Nadine Velazquez team up in first music video
• We drank three rounds with Queens stars Eve and Brandy