DETERMINATION PERSONIFIED
Jayme Lawson shows strength of the remarkable Betty Shabazz
Many actors spend years waiting tables, ringing up sales and hoping just to be seen. ⬤ Jayme Lawson, on the other hand, booked a part in the play “For Colored Girls Who Had Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf ”while still a student at Juilliard.
Since earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts and graduating during the pandemic, Lawson has appeared in major productions, including “The Woman King” and “The Batman.”
Her role as Betty Shabazz, wife of Malcolm X in “Genius: MLK/X,” now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu, isn’t her first portrayal of a significant woman in American history, either. She played a young Michelle Obama in “The First Lady” and Myrlie Evers, an NAACP leader and wife of murdered activist Medgar Evers, in “Till.”
Essentially, at a time when it’s been tough for actors, Lawson has carved out a career for herself.
On the set of “Genius,” Lawson sits at the dining room table where Shabazz and Malcolm X ate. Not surprisingly, Lawson knew more about the husband than the wife before taking this role.
“She’s not really well known,” Lawson says of Shabazz. “Malcolm’s barely mentioned in schools anyway. I came across him once I got to high school and through my teachers, not through the curriculum.”
Lawson outlines the basics of Shabazz’s hardscrabble life, material she used to infuse her portrayal with determination.
“Betty was abandoned by her biological mother when she was a baby and lived with her grandmother in Georgia until she was about 7,” Lawson says. “And then her grandmother passed, and so she went up to Detroit to be reunited with her mother and lived there for a few years till she was 11 and then moved out to live with the Malloys and be adopted by them. She had a tough road.
“That’s part of how she and Malcolm can connect, because they understand they come from tough beginnings,” Lawson says.
Shabazz met Malcolm X through the Nation of Islam. The couple was deeply faithful to the group’s principles, but Shabazz — who was a nurse — bristled at the traditional roles proscribed for women. They were married only seven years before he was assassinated.
To portray a woman of such strength, Lawson was intentional in her preparations.
“I had already read ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X’ years ago,” she says. “And so, of course, I knew his account. But I didn’t want to go back to it. I didn’t want how he saw Betty to influence how I portrayed her.”
She read whatever she could about Shabazz and absorbed how determined she was. As much as Lawson studied, she didn’t allow her research to go past 1965, when Malcolm X was assassinated in Manhattan, leaving Shabazz a widow with six children.
“I did not want to continue reading on past that, because I wanted to keep it within the timeframe,” Lawson says.
Shabazz was in her 20s when her husband rose to fame. Executive producer Gina Prince-Bythewood says it was crucial to cast someone in her 20s to reflect the character accurately.
“I just worked with Jamie Lawson for ‘The Woman King,’ ” Prince-Bythewood says. “I know how extraordinary she is.”
Lawson has been honing her craft for much of her life. Growing up in Washington, D.C., she attended the Duke Ellington School of the Arts before moving to Manhattan for Juilliard.
Being the same age Shabazz was as Malcolm X reached national prominence, Lawson connected with the story of a young woman thrust into the national spotlight.
“Of course, there were a lot of similarities, a lot of things that I could understand,” Lawson says. “Because of how young she was, I didn’t have to make such a big leap. I could honestly do my own perspective. Imagine, OK, how do I digest all of that happening at this age with this information?”
Lawson clearly spent a lot of time thinking about who Shabazz was and how she constantly challenged herself and earned advanced degrees, including a doctorate.
“It’s a journey for me,” Lawson says. “I, and a lot of actors, say you feel like you finally figured it out after it’s finished. But it’s been a journey of discovering her along the way, honestly.”
She and the other leads — Aaron Pierre (Malcolm X), Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Martin Luther King Jr.) and Weruche Opia (Coretta Scott King) — spent a lot of time together. Roughly the same age and hunkering down in Atlanta for five months for “Genius,” the four formed a tight bond.
“I love my cast,” Lawson says. “This is one of the best casts I’ve gotten to be a part of, and we’ve gotten really close, the four of us.”