‘B PURPLE REIGN
Prince receives tribute in landmark ‘Black-ish’ episode
BLACK-ISH
Tuesday, 9 p.m., ABC LACK-ISH” will seal its 100th episode with a “Kiss” by showcasing some of Prince’s biggest hits. When young twins Jack and Diane (Miles Brown and Marsai Martin) express indifference to the lavender-loving singer —“I only like purple on a bruise,” Diane proclaims — their family shares the many ways they were influenced by Prince, who died at age 57 in 2016. The cast — including Tracee Ellis Ross (as Rainbow), Anthony Anderson (Dre), Marcus Scribner (Andre Jr.) and Yara Shahidi (Zoey) — dons some of Prince’s most eye-popping costumes as they lip-sync music video moments from songs such as “When Doves Cry,” “Sign o’ the Times” and “Purple Rain.” The fearless Anderson even gamely tosses all inhibitions aside and rocks a midriff-baring ensemble Prince’s attire from “Kiss.”
Executive producer Kenny Smith, 45, who was named showrunner this season, recently talked to The Post about why nothing compares to Prince.
Whose idea was the tribute?
[Series creator] Kenya Barris was at dinner with friends and a Prince song came on, and a guy in his 20s was like, “Oh, who’s this?” [laughs] Kenya was flabbergasted. There’s a generation that doesn’t know Prince and what an artist like that means, especially [when you’re part of] a black family. How do we pass these things on to the next generation?
What Prince song resonates for you?
“Adore” cemented Prince with me. “Rapping ’til the sun came up” — that was every romance I had in high school, talking to some girl all night long.
Did you have access to Prince’s full catalog?
There were one or two songs they said we wouldn’t have access to. Other than that, our only limit was how many songs we could afford from the estate, and I can say that ABC Studios and the ABC network were very generous. They knew the beauty of it, that it’s Prince and the show’s 100th episode.
How did you select the songs?
We started figuring out what they meant to each character. For Zoey, the song about protests, “Sign o’ the Times,” that’s her song. “Purple Rain” is so iconic, and the fact that Diane’s character is a little dark sometimes, she would connect with that. Would Pops [played by Laurence Fishburne] be into Prince? When “Adore” came out from the “Sign o’ the Times” album, I remember my dad — who’s now 78 and older than Pops — would play that constantly. We tried to find a song that every generation could lock onto. Which song scenes were the
It would be a tie between Anthony’s song and “Purple Rain.” The fact that Anthony wore that crop top — to his credit, as always, he was game for everything, and I love him for it. Then “Purple Rain,” with Diane, you can tell [Marsai Martin] studied that video. The look was perfect [as was] her performance, and the little nuances she brought to make that pop. The moment toward the very end where she takes her hand off the mic and then goes back as if she was about to say something, and then she just says, like, “No” — and walks away. That’s a rock star.
Can you talk about the final scene of the family together, with Dre on keyboards, singing Sinéad O’Connor’s 1990 hit “Nothing Compares 2U,” which was written by Prince?
It was going to be a nice duet between Rainbow and Andre, with another song for the family to come in on; with budget constraints we needed to stick with this one song. But it’s a great song for the whole family to sing, so that’s what it ended up being.
Did you see Anthony Anderson sing opera recently on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon”?
No, but he’s a very talented singer and piano player. And in that final scene, he is playing the keyboards. We added that in to see him play. — most fun to shoot for you?