COKER: Well, they had some trepidation. I’m not gonna front. But my whole thing was that, in using that word, I didn’t want it to be comfortable. I wanted every single time that it’s heard for people to think about it. But I also really wanted the show to live on its own terms, from the standpoint of, this is what it’s like when you eavesdrop on black people talking to each other. That word will come up, at times, in certain ways, so I wanted to explore the context with which it was used. Cottonmouth uses the word differently. In Episode 2, as Luke pushes forward to becoming a hero, the word is referred to in the very beginning of the episode, and at the end, there’s the history of Crispus Attucks. I wanted people to think about it in a way that they hadn’t thought about it before. And at the same time, every blaxploitation movie from Shaft to Hell Up in Harlem to Black Caesar deals with power and deals with these issues, so it needed to feel like that, too. When all else fails, if everyone gets mad, they can blame me.
COLTER: We talked about it, early on. I remember talking to Cheo about it and I was adamant that Luke was not a person that used that language. He was not a person that used that word because he was bigger than that. First and foremost, he’s a superhero, but we’ve got to define this superhero in a bigger sense than just his powers. He needs to be someone we can aspire to be, and I felt like, if he was the kind of guy that used that language all the time, like someone on the street corner who didn’t respect themself or the people around them, then he had lost what he had given up. So, that was a high requirement. In this day and age, if you don’t want to use that word or you choose to not use that word, you’re walking a path on your own because it’s so accepted. Whereas for Luke, he wanted to be better than that. He’s trying to work on himself. He’s trying to change his path. So, when he does use it, it resonates because it’s out of frustration. He can’t deal with this issue right now. He’s going through so much. At this point, he wants to unleash and retaliate with venom and hatred. Sometimes you don’t know the effect of words until you hear it used on you.
Comic-Con 2016: Luke Cage EPs & Mike Colter Interview