Pam Grier paved way for Wonder Woman
WASHINGTON— Even at 68, Pam Grier looks like she can still kick butt.
And the looks don’t deceive, Grier said. While having never played a superhero, “I’m super in real life,” said Grier, smiling and flicking back some of her flowing hair.
Grier is still going strong in an almost 50-year film and television career. “I don’t know why people were surprised at the success of Wonder Woman,” said Grier, star of gritty 1970s action movies including Foxy Brown, Coffy, Black Mama/White Mama and others.
Women like Grier and Angie Dickinson paved the way for current female action stars including Gal Gadot and Charlize Theron, and a new wave of Black female stars such as Taraji P. Henson in her upcoming Proud Mary and Meagan Good, who is remaking Grier’s classic Foxy Brown.
“I applaud them, I want them to succeed,” Grier said. “I started it. I don’t want them to fail.”
But being an action star has its cost: Grier said she hurt herself numerous times doing stunts, including filming Coffy. “I almost broke my ankle,” she said. “They painted my cast to look like a boot, and I’m limping. And I was like, ‘Does this look good?’ It looks good.”
Luckily today’s actors have stunt doubles and better equipment, Grier said. When asked about the difference between doing action today versus back in her day, she laughed and said: “Sports bras.”
Grier has nothing but good wishes for the remake of Foxy Brown.
“It’s going to be interesting,” she said. “You see, I didn’t have a stuntwoman until Foxy Brown. And Meagan, she’s going to do great with stunts.”
Grier was in Washington, D.C., this past weekend to be honoured at the annual “Salute Her: Beauty of Diversity Awards Luncheon.”
Surprisingly, Grier said she has never been inside the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, where she plans to donate some of her movie wardrobe. Part of the reason for her delay is that she wants to go with her mother, Gwendolyn Grier, who lives with her in Colorado but doesn’t fly on airplanes, so it would require a cross-country road trip.
Grier’s also never been inside the White House, but don’t expect her to ask President Donald Trump for an invite. Grier said she was offered a chance to be on the The Apprentice but turned it down, saying she does her “due diligence” on people before working with them.
Grier is also promoting the Brown Sugar streaming service, which streams iconic Black movies such as Grier’s Jackie Brown, Black Mama/ White Mama and others. For Grier, the service is a godsend because her elderly mother can watch some of her lesser-known movies at home which she missed while raising multiple children and making ends meet.
“Now that she’s aging and not well, it’s the best time to sit with her and watch Brown Sugar,” Grier said. “It brought such joy to her to watch films she hadn’t seen, and to see her crushes, to see Billy Dee Williams, Sidney Poitier, Eddie Murphy.”
She’s also working on turning her bestselling autobiography, Foxy: My Life in Three Acts, into a movie, and has some dream casting in mind: comedian Jay Pharoah as Richard Pryor and Roberto Benigni as Italian director Federico Fellini. Who does she see as Pam Grier? “I don’t know, but whoever it is has to bring it!” she said.