‘Black women have been equalizing for years’
Queen Latifah sticks up for little guys in update of classic 1980s drama
Queen Latifah’s father taught her and her brother how to fight at a young age, but he also taught them not to fight — not unless they had to.
“He taught us all these moves and then told us never to use them unless you were defending your mother, your brother; you were sticking up for someone who was being bullied in school, being abused in some sort of way,” she told media during a virtual Television Critics Association panel.
Latifah has brought that sense of sticking up for the little guy into her lead role in a reboot of “The Equalizer,” which debuts Sunday night in the prime post-Super Bowl time slot.
The 1980s original starred British actor Edward Woodward asa retired intelligence agent- turned-private-detective who helped people with problems. This new CBS version was written for the 50-year-old Latifah, a Grammy-nominated singer, and Oscar- and Emmynominated actor and producer who got her start as a rapper.
Her Robyn (as opposed to Robert) McCall is an ex-CIA operative “who’s done working for the people who make the big decisions. She’s done with the greed. She’s done with the uber-powerful. She is all about taking what she has learned through the years … and using it for the other 99 per cent of the population who don’t have access to people like her,” Latifah said.
(Richard Lindheim, co-creator of the original “Equalizer,” gave the new one his blessing, consulting with the writers, attending production meetings and spending time on the set chatting with Latifah about their shared love of science fiction. He died on Jan. 18, a day after screening the pilot and emailing the studio to say he loved it, executive producer Debra Martin Chase said.)
Showrunner Andrew W. Marlowe, who created the reboot with Terri Edda Miller, said the notion of the outsider who helps out the little guy isn’t new, but it’s never been more culturally relevant, and “to have a Black woman be the face of justice, we think is really, really interesting special sauce for this moment.”
Added Martin Chase: “As far as we can tell, Queen Latifah becomes only the fourth Black woman in the history of TV to be the lead in an hour-long network drama. There was Teresa Graves, ‘Get Christie Love!’ and then you jump to Kerry Washington (‘Scandal’), Viola Davis (‘How to Get Away With Murder’), and now Queen Latifah. So, this show is a big deal on many levels.”
Latifah, who was born in East Orange, N.J., as Dana Owens, the daughter of a teacher mother and police officer father, is well aware of that weight and welcomes it.
“It means the world to me to be in this role,” she said in another press conference on Thursday.
“I think Black women have been equalizing for years and years and years, from Hatshepsut (a female pharaoh) to Stacey Abrams to Kamala Harris, to my mother, to my grandmother. I’ve watched Black women be strong, caring, sensitive, handle their business, be entrepreneurs … When it comes to how much we actually carry, and how much grit we have and how much determination we have, and how powerful we are and how magical we are … it’s time for the world to just see it on a normal basis.”
Of course, Robyn has abilities that your average woman, Black or otherwise, wouldn’t have. She can single-handedly take out multiple armed bad guys, ride a motorcycle well enough to elude pursuing police cruisers, perform surveillance, break into buildings and generally outsmart just about anybody.
She has help from some skilled friends, including sharpshooting bar owner Melody (Liza Lapira), Melody’s hacker husband Harry (Adam Goldberg), and an ex-CIA buddy who now runs his own security service, William Bishop (Chris Noth).
And Robyn is not just a fighter for justice for the downtrodden, but also a single mother of a teenage daughter, played by Laya DeLeon Hayes (“Doc McStuffins”). They live with Robyn’s Aunt Vi, played by Lorraine Toussaint (“Selma,” “Orange Is the New Black”).
Latifah and the producers said it was important to them to give Robyn a life beyond just besting bad guys.
“She’s a living, breathing woman,” said Miller. “She is not impenetrable or impermeable. She bleeds. She feels. And that’s one of the things that’s really special about our ‘Equalizer,’ is that she is very grounded in reality.”
It was also important to Latifah to show Robyn battling with her brains as well as her brawn, which is not to say she didn’t relish the action scenes.
“I like to fight as much as possible,” she said. “And I think we’re getting better with our fight choreography as well,” she said, noting that she draws on her background as a rapper and singer to play the fight scenes like songs in her head.
“I have a great deal of respect for stunt people and what they have to do to make people like me look really good because, obviously, I can’t do all of the stunts,” she added. “I’m able to do a lot of intimate, close-contact fighting and things like that. But I’m not getting crashed on a table or … there are certain things that I’m just not doing on the (motor) bikes at this point. I would have done it in my 20s, but maybe not now.”
She hopes people will be entertained by the show and perhaps have conversations about the subject matter it tackles. “And hopefully, they’ll start to say, ‘Damn, Latifah was badass.’ The ego in me wants them to say that.”
“The Equalizer” debuts Sunday at 10:30 p.m. on Global TV before moving to its regular 8 p.m. time slot on Feb. 14, and can be streamed on STACKTV.
“One of the things that’s really special about our ‘Equalizer,’ is that she is very grounded in reality.”
TERRI EDDA MILLER
CO-SHOWRUNNER