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Diarra Kilpatrick<\/a> is making her mark on TV with a new dark comedy crime series <\/span>Diarra From Detroit<\/em><\/a>, and the celebrated actress and writer is still wrapping her head around everything she’s accomplished with her new project.<\/span><\/p>\n Kilpatrick walked the purple carpet at the Los Angeles premiere of her new BET+ series on Wednesday, and she spoke with ET’s Denny Directo about bringing her new series to fruition — and casting <\/span>Morris Chestnut<\/a> as her ex — a role that called for some intimacy.<\/span><\/p>\n “Absolutely. Ladies, that’s how it’s done,” Kilpatrick joked. “They actually paid me to kiss Morris Chestnut. Is that ludicrous or no?”<\/span><\/p>\n In <\/span>Diarra From Detroit<\/span><\/em>, Kilpatrick stars as the titular Diarra — a school teacher in the midst of a divorce, looking for a rebound date on Tinder. When a man she feels she had a connection with after a first date goes missing, she feels there’s more to it than being ghosted.<\/span><\/p>\n Diarra begins to investigate the disappearance, and gets dragged into the dangerous Detroit underworld, all while navigating her split from her ex, played by Chestnut.<\/span><\/p>\n “He’s such a sweetie, and he’s been behind the show so much,” Kilpatrick said of Chestnut. “He’s just the best.”<\/span><\/p>\n Kilpatrick also had a great deal of love and praise for her co-executive producer, Kenya Barris, who helped get the show off the ground.<\/span><\/p>\n “As a black woman, to have your voice amplified by one of the very best, he makes everything funnier,” she said of Barris. “He’s been a blessing.”<\/span><\/p>\n As for her mystery-driven new series, Kilpatrick addressed her inspiration, and recalled how she got the idea from her time as a child, watching old mystery shows on TV with her grandma.<\/span><\/p>\n “Sitting up as a little girl next to my grandmother while she watched <\/span>Murder, She Wrote<\/span><\/em> and <\/span>Columbo<\/span><\/em>.\u00a0Those were white shows, but her commentary on them made them black shows,” Kilpatrick recalled. “And I thought it was time for that.”<\/span><\/p>\n “It was time to see Jessica Fletcher with a little more edge. Running around the hood solving some crimes,” said Kilpatrick, referring to <\/span>Angela Lansbury’s iconic sleuth from Murder, She Wrote<\/em><\/a>. “So I really wanted to put a black woman in the driver seat of a story like that. I’ve been reading <\/span>Nancy Drew<\/span><\/em> books my whole life, you know? And I never seen anybody in box braids do anything like that.”<\/span><\/p>\n