Bitter-sweet
Queen Sugar blends the sweetness of family connection with bitter sibling rivalry.
Queen Sugar Season 1 Mondays (from 16 April) e.tv (*194) 22:00
Queen Sugar (2016- current) is a 13-episode family drama based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Natalie Baszile. It’s produced by talkshow queen Oprah Winfrey in association with executive producer and series creator Ava DuVernay. In the show, we meet the three Bordelon siblings – New Orleans activist Nova (Rutina Wesley, Tara Thornton in vampire fantasy horror True Blood, 2008-2014), LA basketball wife Charley (Dawn-Lyen Gardner, Megan McLaren in comic book action series Luke Cage, 2016current) and dirt-poor ex- convict and unemployed single-dad Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe, Tyler in comedy series Awkward, 2011-2016) – each of whom has their own complicated life and issues. When their father Ernest (Glynn Turman) falls ill, they have to leave their lives behind for a while as they decide on the future of his struggling 800-acre sugarcane farm in Louisiana. With such different goals and personalities, it’s going to be an epic battle to reach that agreement, but it’s a fight worth having. “The Bordelons are black, but the story is universal,” says Rutina. “We all walk in the same truth: Your family may be dysfunctional, but it’s still your family.”
SEEING THE LIGHT
Part of what makes Queen Sugar so gorgeous to watch is the extraordinary lighting work in the series. It’s a technical issue we wouldn’t normally talk about, but effort has been made to light all the characters so their skin glows and their expressions come to life. Ava explains, “Historically, you’ve had really muddy, unforgiving, unintentional images of black people. So I learnt a lot from Bradford Young and Arthur Jafa and Malik Sayeed and the great black cinematographers about how to actually light our skin. There’s just such a variance of tints in skintone. You light each one as if they’re the hero of the story, and it takes a little bit longer and everyone doesn’t know how to do it – it’s not just putting a light on. Our Latino cinematographer Antonio Calvache was really extraordinary with his work – he was very intentional with the brown skin tones.”