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When
the show ended, in 1990, King transitioned
to movies and landed supporting
roles in instant classics such as
Boyz N the Hood, Poetic Justice,
and Friday. This helped cement her
place in the black imagination as
an actor who is both regal and deeply
knowable, like a member of your
family—just transferred to
celluloid. “Not everybody thrives
in supporting roles. There are people
who don’t see the value of
them. Regina does,” says actress
Holly Robinson Peete, who is among
King’s closest friends.
“There
are very few people that everybody
categorically fucks with
—and Regina is just one
of those people.”
Then
there were films like Jerry
Maguire, Miss Congeniality 2,
and Ray, which proved King could
try on different genres with
ease. These supporting roles
were chosen with a specific
purpose: after her son, Ian
Alexander II, was born, King
chose to limit herself to ensemble
projects so she could spend
more time with him. (Ian is
now 23 and regularly accompanies
her to awards ceremonies, including
this year’s Golden Globes.)
That
meant resigning herself to a
career largely on television,
a move actors of her caliber
hesitated to make before the
peak-TV era took hold. King
dove in anyway, and came out
on the other side with central
roles in such shows as the critically
acclaimed 2009 cop drama Southland
and the beloved animated series
The Boondocks. In the latter,
King voiced brothers Huey and
Riley; casting her as both “solved
the problem of finding an actor
who could keep up with Regina,”
show creator Aaron McGruder
says.
She
came out of her TV-only period
with three Emmys: one for her
turn as activist Aliyah Shadeed
in ABC’s tense anthology
American Crime, one for playing
the elitist Terri LaCroix in
the same show’s second
season, and one for portraying
grief-stricken mother Latrice
in the Netflix limited series
Seven Seconds. She also produces
and directs, having helmed episodes
of series like Being Mary Jane,
Scandal, Insecure, and This
Is Us. When asked to name her
directorial dream project, King
says, “It’s tough,
because now Viola Davis is doing
it”—referring to an
upcoming Shirley Chisholm biopic
that Davis is producing and
starring in. “It’s
something that I’ve been
working on for a long time.
I’m still not letting it
go.”
“If
you came to this planet from
Jupiter and you watched [Regina]
on set, you would not know that
her path to directing was through
acting,” says Scandal star
Kerry Washington. “She
speaks so many of the languages
of filmmaking as beautifully
as the acting part.”
It
tracks, then, that once King
decided to return to feature
films, her first role would
be an Oscar-nominated turn in
If Beale Street Could Talk.
The story revolves around a
young couple—Tish (KiKi
Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James)—who
are deeply in love; King plays
Sharon, Tish’s mother.
Her
biggest scene comes after Fonny
has been falsely accused of
rape and imprisoned. Sharon,
desperate to help, follows his
accuser, Victoria, to Puerto
Rico, in the hope that she will
recant. We witness Sharon preparing
privately in her hotel room—standing
in front of a mirror, putting
on lipstick and her wig. Then
she takes it all off and gazes
painfully at her reflection,
thinking of the ugly work ahead
of her. The scene is simple
and raw, bereft of vanity.
“In
that moment, I didn’t have
to give much direction. Regina
knew exactly what she was doing,”
Jenkins says later. “It’s
incredibly vulnerable, powerful,
and brave all at once.”
Despite
her woes—financial burdens,
battling racism—Sharon
is a character buoyed by empathy,
reminding Tish that love brought
her into the world and will
carry her through it. She and
her husband, Joe (Colman Domingo),
create a home that is both safe
and progressive. “The Rivers
family, with everything that
they had up against their backs,
they don’t operate from
a place of fear,” King
says.
Offscreen,
the Beale Street cast bonded
over dinners and chats in between
takes. Some of the familial
adoration they affected became
permanent: “I don’t
even call Regina ‘Regina’
too often,” Layne says.
“When I see her, I call
her Mama.”
|
elcome
to the first issue of .NET
Black Professional Women Magazine
2019. I would like to first
thank God for the vision of
helping others reach the goal
He has blessed added to their
lives. I would also like to
thank the women who trust
God and have enough faith
to make their dream a reality.
It have not always been easy
and your journey no matter
how great or small has not
ended. We hope that this magazine
will allow you to become properpous
and your services is helpful
to those who are in need.
Working
with producer Michael J. Powell
(an old Chapter 8 cohort), Baker
released her major-label debut,
Rapture, in 1986. It was a platinum,
Grammy-winning smash, appealing
to both urban and adult contemporary
listeners and producing two all-time
quiet storm classics in "Caught
Up in the Rapture" and "Sweet
Love." Baker toured the world
in 1987 and her guest appearance
on the Winans track "Ain't
Got No Need to Worry" won a
Grammy. Her equally stylish follow-up
album, Giving You the Best That
I Got, appeared in 1988, spawning
more staples in the title track
and "Just Because." "Giving
You the Best That I Got" also
won Baker two more Grammys, for
Best Female R&B Vocal and Best
R&B Song. For her third Elektra
album, Baker decided to handle a
greater share of the songwriting,
hence the title Compositions, which
was released in 1990 and featured
even stronger jazz inflections than
Baker's previous work (not to mention
all live instruments).
Following
Compositions, Baker took a
break from recording and touring;
after having her first son
in 1993, she returned to the
studio to craft Rhythm of
Love, which was released in
1994. In the years that followed,
Baker was mostly silent, despite
her fans' clamoring for a
jazz album; instead, she raised
her family and became embroiled
in contract disputes with
Elektra, which eventually
led her to move to Atlantic.
She began working on a new
album in 2000, but had to
start over from scratch due
to defective recording equipment
that made the original tracks
unsalvageable. In 2004 it
was announced that she had
signed with Blue Note and
was still working on her new
album. In the meantime, the
Atlantic imprint Rhino released
Night of Rapture: Live, a
1987 concert originally available
on video. Baker finally returned
to the studio in 2003 and
issued My Everything, her
first album in ten years.
Two years later she released
her first holiday album, Christmas
Fantasy. The 2012 return single
"Lately," a Tyrese
cover, received a Grammy nomination
in the category of Best Traditional
R&B Performance. Its parent
album, Only Forever, was prepared
for 2013.
he
anxiety of being black, female and
at the mercy of the U.S. healthcare
system first hit Tina Sacks when her
mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Bette Parks Sacks, then in her 50s,
intuitively knew something was wrong
but, like many African American women,
was afraid her doctor would give her
the brush-off.
t
is the second day of 2019, and while
the rest of the country is gently
reneging on resolutions they made
24 hours before, Regina King is
hurtling into the future. We’re
sitting in a small room in a Beverly
Hills mansion. She has spent the
afternoon shifting from one soft
power stance to another in a verdant
backyard, making the unseasonably
chilly day look warm.
wen
is the Founder of 'Art for hope'.
"ART FOR HOPE" is
about bringing awareness to causes,
and challenges in hopes of finding
solutions and cures, and that we never
give up hope.
addy
you are greatly missed. You
are missed by your entire
family especially by me. I
got up one morning and went
to visit you. I dressed like
nothing happened, drove all
the way to your house expecting
to see you. Expecting to see
you sitting on the porch drinking
your morning coffee. And ...
you ...weren't there.
or
more than 30 years, Ruth E.
Carter has dressed the characters
in seminal films about the
African-American experience,
from "Amistad" and
"Selma" to "Love
& Basketball" and
much of Spike Lee's oeuvre.
