‘Black-ish’ star is proud of how letter ‘n’ has made a difference in her life
I came out my mama singing an Ethel Merman song. I didn’t cry, I sang.
THE MOTHER OF BLACK HOLLYWOOD A MEMOIR Jenifer Lewis Loot.co.za (R360) Amistad
WHEN casting Tina Turner’s mom in the 1993 film What’s Love Got to Do With It?, the director turned to a relative unknown by the name of Jenifer Lewis.
The actress, who had done just a few small film and TV parts after arriving in Hollywood via Broadway and cabarets, is only about two years older than the film’s star, Angela Bassett.
So when she got the call, she almost slammed down the phone.
That is, until they told her how much she was going to be paid.
“Hell, for that money,” Lewis recalled, “I would have played the daddy.”
That film established Lewis in what was to become her signature role: the matriarch.
Armed with her penchant for delivering memorable one-liners, Lewis launched a nearly 25-year career of playing the mother, auntie or grandmother to such stars as Will Smith, Tupac Shakur and Whitney Houston.
These days, she plays Anthony Anderson’s mother on the comedy Black-ish.
The Mother of Black Hollywood is based on diaries she has kept since she was in the seventh grade.
Lewis chronicles her life as a 1980s musical theatre performer, watching hundreds of her theatre friends die of Aids.
She writes about being raped as a teen by the pastor of her childhood church, her battle with bipolar disorder and sex addiction and her gradual emergence as a Hollywood mainstay.
And, while her face and her booming voice may be recognisable to some, her name is still one that escapes many – especially the unusual way of spelling her first name with one “n”.
In the small town of Kinloch, Missouri, Dorothy Mae Lewis named her youngest of seven children after the 1940s actress Jennifer Jones.
But she wanted her daughter to be unique, in Lewis words: “My mother wanted something different in my name.”
The spelling still people.
Lewis’s managers make sure everyone knows about it and regularly enter dressing rooms before her just to ensure there aren’t any signs misspelled.
If there are, they are ripped down before Lewis sees them.
Lewis grew up watching allaround entertainers such as Judy Garland, Sammy Davis Jr and Pearl Bailey, while trying to master acting, singing and dancing.
“I have had that charisma and that presence since I was born,” confuses she said. “I came out my mama singing an Ethel Merman song,” she said. “I didn’t cry. I sang.”
“She is a force of nature,” said Whoopi Goldberg, who has worked with Lewis in four projects, including both Sister Act movies.
“She is one of the most talented persons in the world.”
“Don’t think you’re going to be happy when you get something,” says the irrepressible Lewis.
“You have to be happy on your way to being happy. I don’t leave a room unless I leave a smile. “This is my story. “This is my song. I came through the fire. And now, I’m skipping, bitches.”
– The Washington Post