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It’s crazy, right? I’ve been in the business for 30 years, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told outright that I can’t play the lead in the movie because having a Black female lead is not going to sell overseas. I think that conversation has shifted over time but not dramatically. One of the biggest examples is Black Panther. People try to make excuses and say, “Well, that’s because it was a Marvel movie.” No. It’s because we haven’t had the opportunity to do something like that. Weed Bee Happy Doormat
When you were told you couldn’t play the lead because having a Black female lead wouldn’t sell overseas, what movie was that for?
You know, I don’t want to say. It’s actually happened just off the top of my head on three occasions, but I’m sure it’s happened more than that. One that comes to mind immediately… I don’t want to say, because I was ultimately the lead in a film that he produced, but it was about nine years later. And he’s a lovely guy so I think he just believed it based on the myth, and the general perception around Hollywood.
I’m glad that perception’s getting blown up. Speaking of perception, when you talk about films that center on Black women, Hollywood has historically inundated us with images of Black women in dire circumstances—tragedy porn, so to speak. So it’s great that your film centers the stories of four middle-class Black women going through everyday struggles.
That’s a fact: It often is either the tragedy, or the cookout, or the comedy, or living in a certain ’hood—things that are culturally true experiences but can sometimes be caricatures and a lot of the time doesn’t represent every Black person. I grew up in Santa Clarita, California, and was one of one Black family growing up there. I dealt with a lot of racism and bullying, and coming into the industry, I was exposed to a lot of different people from a lot of walks of life. When I was 18 and I got my first serious boyfriend, he lived out in L.A., and when I went out there it was a culture shock for me, because I’d never seen that many Black people in once place. I was used to being one Black person in a sea of white people. I think that not every Black person’s experience as a human being is represented in film at the magnitude that it should be. And a lot of things that the film explores are not just Black women’s experiences, but I think it’s unique that you get to see it through their lens—women not being able to have babies, women not sure if they want to be a mother, women dealing with addiction and it’s not a drug you go buy off the street.
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