‘P-Valley’ creator thrilled season making viewers ‘uncomfortable’
There’s something about “P-Valley” that draws you in, more than likely its central trifecta: the promise of sex, the hope of love and the certainty of death.
But there’s even more that keeps you there, connective tissue that’s compelling enough to make you care about the characters who inhabit the series’ fictional town of Chucalissa, Mississippi.
Creator and showrunner Katori Hall describes the setting as a combination of the places she grew up that can’t readily be found on TV, a mix of city and country that conjures authentic Black Southernness.
“I always say that if Chucalissa was a city, it would be this fusion of Memphis; Tunica, Mississippi; and Jackson, Mississippi; all kind of put in a pot and boiled and marinated together,” she said.
“Chucalissa is reflecting the ’hood, the rural communities, the different lingos, the musicality of Southern Black speech. It’s all represented in this fictional world that is quite real and is based off of everything that I have experienced in my life. That’s why it feels so tactile,” Hall added.
Follow those roads, and you end up with “P-Valley,” based on Hall’s play of (almost) the same name and featuring both political — a mayor’s race pitting a preacher, an interloper and a son of the land against each other — and poleitical intrigue — the lives of exotic dancers and those in their orbit.
In the first season, everything revolved around the strip club the Pynk, run by Uncle Clifford (Nicco Annan). The second season is broader: It’s about the people in all their lovely, messy glory.
“I always tell people the show is not called ‘The Pynk,’ the show is called ‘P-Valley.’ What I have found to be the most ambitious thing is getting inside of our characters more and becoming more intimate with them,” said Hall.
“The audience, because we’re getting behind the masks, literally and figuratively, of all of our characters, they’re beginning to see themselves more ... and it’s been making people really uncomfortable, which is a joy.”
And no one is seeing more than Uncle Clifford, who is in everybody’s business (and knee-deep in his own). That includes a torrid love affair and an inspiring sense of self.
“I first asked Katori, ‘Where did this idea come from, of this character?’ And (Hall) said, ‘I’m just interested in seeing what a person could be like if they accept their full self, all of their femininity and all of their masculinity,’ ” said Annan. The actor clung to that note.
“This season, it’s like the Olympics for me with Uncle Clifford; it’s an emotional roller coaster,” Annan said. “And there were things that, as an artist, I very rarely get an opportunity to do. And especially being a Black man, and being a Black gay man and being a Black gay man of a certain size and then being all of that playing this nonbinary person in such an inclusive space. Normally when you dip your toe in those pools, it’s so minimal, and this is just a vast open galaxy. I just feel like I’m every man,” Annan said.
Saturated in color, drenched in melodrama, Uncle Clifford may have described the series’ evolving trajectory best, saying, “This place is full of haints and unsung melodies, child.”
Bouncer Diamond (Tyler Lepley) is revealed as a roots worker, something foreshadowed in season one. The oft-bruised and battered Keyshawn’s (Shannon Thornton) origin story is told as a fractured fairy tale. Lil Murda (J. Alphonse Nicholson) and OG dancer Mercedes (Brandee Evans) make money moves. And COVID-19 makes all types of businesses stop and start.
It sounds like a lot, but anyone who has spent time in a town like Chucalissa knows that stories are always intertwined.
“All the different marginalized communities that the show represents really are just amplified, this season and in the work,” Annan said.