Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’s interview with Oprah Winfrey has shattered any lingering illusions about the British royal family. In “Oprah with Meghan and Harry: A CBS Primetime Special,” the Sussexes discussed at length their decision to step down as senior working members of the royal family, while getting candid about all the abuse Meghan experienced from the British press, as well as the lack of support they received from the prince’s family.
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With his critically acclaimed nonfiction work, Between The World And Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates laid himself bare. Writing the book as a letter to his then 15-year-old son, Coates unearthed memories from his boyhood in West Baltimore, then moved to his son’s birth and into the present day. Between The World And Me was published in 2015, just before Trump gave new life to the United States’ rotten core. In the years since, social media and the ubiquity of cameraphones has amplified Black death in the media. Police brutality, unyielding anti-Blackness, and an exhausting presidential election cycle have dominated our day-to-day lives. With history at his back and the events of his own Black life embedded in his memory, the journalist could not have predicted our current state when he first published his manuscript. Still, the author ended up pretty spot-on. Coates was brutally realistic about Black life, even then. In HBO’s film adaptation of the New York Times best-seller, his words echo across the screen, burrowing into our past and leaving hints about the future of Black America and this country.
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Black women aren’t often given the opportunity to tell our love stories publicly. Instead, our courtships, regrets, and lustful encounters are whispered about amongst our girlfriends. Epic love stories -- the ones that we see in movie theaters or on TV screens are typically reserved for white women, while advice from male “relationship experts,” and unfounded statistics are strewn across social media platforms and news sites telling Black women all the reasons we can't find love. With her new romance series, Love Is__ writer/showrunner Mara Brock Akil is reclaiming the romance genre for Black women by sharing her own very intimate story – a tale of how she and her husband, writer/director Salim Akil fell deeply in love. Love Is__ follows Nuri (portrayed by Michele Weaver) a rising writer in '90s Black Hollywood whose settling into her career in LA, making a name or herself, and furnishing her newly purchased home. Her life collides with Yasir (portrayed by Will Catlett), an aspiring writer-director without two nickels to rub together. Told from the perspective of the couple 20 years in the future, with music from everyone from Brownstone to Lauryn Hill contributing to the soundtrack, Akil invites you into this exhilarating time in her life, one that was full of romance, heartache, and so much magic. At the Love Is__ premiere in Los Angeles, I chatted with Akil, OWN CEO Oprah Winfrey and Weaver about the series, the power of Black love, and what can grasp from heartache.
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Love stories were made for the screen. There is a magic that comes with falling, diving in head first, and allowing yourself to become connected and enraptured with another soul. In romance films, the audience is pulled under quickly, caught up in the first mesmerizing moments of desire and lust. However, television allows artists and audiences to unpack the nuances of love. We are able to suss out the grit and imperfections that come with entangling two lives together. The enchantment is still there obviously, but there is also space for the reality of it all, the past relationships, finances, and the grind of daily life. Set in Los Angeles in the 1990’s, married Hollywood dream team Mara Brock Akil and Salim Akil -- who've brought us series like, Girlfriends, The Game, and Black Lightning, present Love Is__. A love story based loosely off of their relationship, the gorgeously shot drama follows Nuri (portrayed by Michele Weaver) and Yasir (portrayed by Will Catlett). Told from the perspective of the couple twenty years into the future, wiser Nuri (Wendy Davis) and Yasir (Clarke Peters) reflect on their initial spark. At different points in the lives and careers when they first meet, the pair sees something special in one another. When they first connect Nuri is a new homeowner with a coveted position in the writer’s room on a new black sitcom, Marvin. Yasir, on the other hand, is struggling in LA. A recent transplant from the Bay – he's an aspiring writer/director who is trying to make his last two unemployment checks stretch as far as possible. A week before the Love Is__ series premiere, I sat in the OWN offices in Los Angeles to chat with the Akils, Catlett, and Weaver about bringing the sexy and rich love story to the big screen, what it was like to reflect back on the ‘90s, and why seeing Black love on screen is so healing.
https://youtu.be/ZgRXkypO5_Y
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Bianca Lawson radiates on screen. Becoming Darla on the stunning OWN series Queen Sugar has been an exceptional gift for the actress. A veteran in the television and film industry, Lawson has been delivering stellar performances in everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the ever-popular Pretty Little Liars. On Queen Sugar – where she plays a young recovering addict, Darla who is trying to rebuild a life with her son Blue (Ethan Hutchison) and his father Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe) — Lawson has had to expose herself in ways that she hasn’t ever had to previously. Infectiously effervescent, Lawson’s personality is very different from the quiet and anxious Darla. We spoke earlier this week, just a few days before the premiere of Darla’s much-anticipated reunion with her estranged parents. “There is something about this particular character, she's completely unlike anything else I've ever played — you have a really visceral experience with her," Lawson explained to me. “It's analytical for me. I think when I started acting it's something about feeling the security of hiding behind a character — and for her, I've had to actually reveal more of my true self. With Darla, there's something very interesting about her where the things that she's gone through even though I haven't gone through the exact same situations, I've had to process things about myself or confront things about myself or at least expose certain aspects of myself to do her justice. This has probably been the most personal character for me, and definitely, I'd say the most complex and intricately layered. I feel like she's made me a better actress. I feel like she's made me a more empathetic human.”
Accustomed to creating her own back-stories for her characters, Lawson was not aware of the complicated layers that shaped Darla’s past when she first read for the role. Embodying this young woman has brought forth an arresting fierceness not often seen on television – especially in a role that has historically been portrayed stereotypically. “Ava and I had a long call before I officially came on,” Lawson recalled. “She told me a little bit about her thoughts about the character, and why she wanted to write this character. She really wanted to tell the story of a young Black woman getting sober in a way that hadn't been done before — in a way that was more real and true to life. There’s a real loneliness in that journey.”
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I’ve personally never felt that characters of African decent should be inherently good, educated, or of a particular caliber in order to be presented in film and on television. In my opinion, that is an argument of past centuries, when the narrative of Black Americans on screen may have needed a particular sort of trajectory. I also feel that everyone has a right to tell their stories, but I don’t feel that these stories should be mediocre or inherently stereotypical, which is why I often find the work of Tyler Perry extremely problematic. Still, despite my criticisms and the criticisms of others, Perry has carved out a prolific path for himself in the entertainment industry. From his stage plays to his body of films, and now with four shows on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN Network, including, “Love Thy Neighbor” and “The Haves and the Have Nots”, which premièred last week to over 3 million viewers, it’s clear that his audience is always eager to tune in.
At a recent press event for “The Haves and the Have Nots” and “Love Thy Neighbor”, Tyler Perry, as well as some of the casts from both series, including John Schneider, Angela Robinson, Patrice Lovely, and Palmer Williams sat down to talk about the success of the shows, Perry’s writing process, and being a part of OWN Network. Shadow and Act was there to take it all in. Here are some of the highlights.
On the Evolution of Both “The Haves and the Have Nots” and “Love Thy Neighbor”
Tyler Perry: What’s amazing about this, is that we are about to cross one hundred episodes for both of these shows. What’s so great about it is, that you start one way, but the characters dictate where they want to go, and how they want to go. If you look at a show when it first starts, you go, ‘hum…how is going to go?’ but by the tenth episode, you see the characters start to gel, and you really start to believe them. That’s what has happened with both of these shows. By episode fifteen we had settled in. I think at this point in both the shows, the characters have evolved and the show has a evolved. With Veronica (Angela Robinson ‘HAHN’) having one or two lines in the first show, I didn’t know she was going to turn out to be this character, but I love the madness of it. I love the insanity of it.
On the Writing Process
TP: I’ve said this before, I don’t have a writer’s room, I write all of the shows myself. Ninety-one episodes a season, I’m sitting at the computer writing, writing and writing. I want the voice to be authentic, so the audience is hearing from me and not other writers. There are a lot of other shows on the air that are fantastic shows, but they have writer’s rooms. The people that we love the most only write one or two episodes a season. What’s great about it when your writing for actors like this, who are tremendously talented, you can throw anything at them. I sit in a room and as I’m sitting at the computer, and I can hear these characters talking. The only thing that is difficult for me is to force one show out of my head so that Eddie doesn’t sound like Joe, or that Mama Hattie doesn’t sound like Angela which in a way they kind of do. If you look at the characters themselves, and the shows themselves they are very different and don’t think people really give credit to how different each show is. The pleasure that I take is being at work for the actual characters themselves. So, the minute that they stop talking we have a problem.
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Image: Tyler Perry