The heart of Texas
Family, community at core of ‘Miss Juneteenth’
This Friday is Juneteenth, a celebration of the day 155 years ago when slavery was abolished in Texas, a two-year holdout from Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.
“Miss Juneteenth” is a fictional mother-daughter drama filmed around Fort Worth’s Miss Juneteenth 2019 pageant with Nicole Beharie (Fox’s supernatural series “Sleepy Hollow”) as Turquoise, one very determined mother.
“This is basically (screenwriter-director) Channing Godfrey Peoples’ love letter to her community in Fort Worth,” Beharie, 35, said.
Before filming began Peoples advised, “You’ve got to get the dialect right because you’ll be acting alongside locals.”
That’s all Beharie needed to hear. “I like a challenge. I like nuance and moments of humor when you wouldn’t expect it,” she said.
“I live in New York and have a way of moving and speaking, so I went to Fort Worth early to see their energy. It really is a community.”
Turquoise’s bar, which serves mouth-watering barbecue and beer, is not a set. “It is a place where everybody goes. I was working at that real bar. I went and learned how they do their business and spent days there.
“It looks tough but it’s really a warm, inviting place. There’s love there even.”
The marching bands, dance groups, decorated floats with Miss Juneteenth candidates and the outgoing winner — it’s all the real deal.
“We were part of the parade. It was important to Channing because it’s about her community. She actually goes to the pageant.
“Some of the things Turquoise says are things Channing has said herself. I had,” Beharie emphasized, “to be part of that community and not stand out.”
Turquoise has an all-consuming, monomaniacal determination her 15-year-old daughter will be crowned, as she was, Miss Juneteenth. Why?
“It’s the same reason why most American parents want their kids go to college,” Beharie said. “For Turquoise that was her way to a scholarship and she had a fumble — she became pregnant — and couldn’t walk through those doors.
“She doesn’t want her daughter to have to work in a bar and struggle.
“It’s like how in the past you were certain for this goal to give you happiness — and you get there and discover this isn’t the only way. That’s the beauty of the story, it’s like a fairy tale.”
For Beharie, the best part of “Miss Juneteenth” was sharing a birthday cake with Kai, her screen daughter.
“This is Alexis (Chikaeze)’s first film. I auditioned with her and went with getting her on set and over her nerves and comfortable. She trusted me. And I’m really proud of what she did.”