Almost 10 years after the miniseries made TV history, some of its performers find many Hollywood racial barriers still in place.
Actress Beverly Todd was nervous. For the first time in four years, she was about to step on-stage at the Improvisation Comedy Club in West Hollywood. Todd knew that a first-rate performance was essential if she were to be invited back a second night. Improv co-owner Budd Friedman was there to review her 10-minute routine, as were a few close friends and a mostly white audience. After a few jokes about her new hair style, Todd segued into a routine about her high-school friend, Willie, “who majored in prison prep” and nicknamed her “Beef Liver Lips.”
“I know you can’t tell now, but when I was growing up, I had big lips,” Todd confessed to her audience. “People used to tease me about them. And when other black people tease you about your lips, you’ve got some big lips.” The audience chuckled.
You may remember Beverly Todd in an altogether different role—as the adult slave Fanta (and Kunta Kinte’s love interest) in Roots, the 1997 ABC miniseries based on Alex Haley’s best-selling novel about his ancestors. Todd considers herself fortunate to have worked on such a “spectacular” project, especially one that was “seen by so many people” and remains one of the highest-rated dramatic shows in television history.
“Roots had such a profound impact on people around the world,” says Todd. “But in terms of the work generated for black artists, it just faded away to become another media event.”
Despite the fact that Todd herself has hardly faded from view since Roots—her numerous credits include guest shots on series such as St. Elsewhere, Cagney & Lacey, Falcon Crest, and Magnum, P.I., as well as starring roles in TV-movies—she feels that she is still not working enough. She feels, she says, “relegated to nothingness.”
So Todd is now seeking opportunities as a comedienne. Recently, she went to a Hollywood manager, hoping to rekindle her acting career. “He said to me, ‘ Beverly, I love your work, but I just don’t want to handle any black actresses. They’re too hard to get work for’.”
Now some might think that Todd is just an insecure actress who blames a bigoted industry for her career disappointments. She is not alone in her view, however. Three years ago, a group of leading black actors charged that minority actors were being excluded from “fair and meaningful participation” in network shows. Today, network executives can easily parry discrimination charges by pointing to the prominent roles played by blacks in such series as Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice and The Cosby Show.
Nevertheless, critics charge that discrimination still exists. Only this new strain is more subtle and discreet. Some even think it’s more dangerous because “those who are guilty of it don’t even realize it,” says Robert Hooks, one of the black actors who criticized the industry three years ago. “That’s when it becomes frightening—when you don’t even know you’re being a racist.” But didn’t the telecast of Roots in 1977 change all that? Not according to the actors who were involved with the miniseries. And to examine their frustrations is to better understand the black and white realities of today’s subtle prejudices.
“The hope was that Roots would open doors for black persons in television,” recalls Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs, who played Noah in the miniseries. “But it didn’t happen that way.”
How unfortunate, too. Because the networks did try to capitalize on Roots by throwing together shows starring black actors, including NBC’s King, ABC’s The Lazarus Syndrome with Louis Gossett, Jr. (Fiddler in Roots) and CBS’s Paris. But when all three flopped, “the presumption became that. . .the blackness was the reason for the failure,” says Todd Gitlin author of “Inside Prime Time” and professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. As a result, the door to prime-time television was again slammed shut to minorities.
“There’s no question Roots did not have the same impact on the careers of black actors that it would have if it had starred white actors, says Roots producer Stan Margulies.
Actress Lynne Moody agrees.
It was just after the success of Roots, and the filming of Roots: The Next Generation, in which Moody played Alex Haley’s great-grandmother, Irene. She was depressed, angry and bitter that promises of fame and fortune never materialized. “I was in such pain,” she recalls, her sparkling eyes swelling with memories, “I wasn’t able to deal with it.
“If you had been a white actor, and you were in the most popular show in television history, you would have had — at the very least — a job. Most of the time you would have become a star,” Moody says softly. “Well I thought I was on my way, but I wasn’t going anywhere.
“So I became angry at my white friends for being able to go out on parts I couldn’t, and angry at my black friends because they were saying, ‘ Lynne, you work more than any black actress in town.’ I couldn’t relate to the whites, and I couldn’t relate to the blacks, except on one issue — discrimination.” Even though soon thereafter Moody became a regular on the series Soap, it didn’t stop the “race thing” from tearing her up inside.
Although she has had to weather similar bouts of unemployment recently, she has never had to work a second job to pay the mortgage and, thanks to the help of a therapist, she has learned to deal with the frustrations of being a black actress. “I’m more optimistic these days, but I’m still angry, Moody adds. “Unfortunately, there are people in power who have prejudices. My struggle has been to get beyond that bull—-.”
Setting aside today’s statistics — which clearly reflect an underrepresentation of minorities in film and television — the prevailing attitude among black actors in Hollywood can be considered guarded optimism, at best. Sure, the opportunities have improved since the first telecast of Roots, “but not to a degree where you can say there’s been any real dramatic changes,” charges John Amos, who played the adult Kunta Kinte.
Of course, it is no longer as true that black actors are cast only in degrading racial stereotypes, or that they are uniformly shuffled off to the back of casting lines. “But unless a [script] specifically designates a black person or Mexican-American, few directors or producers will think of anyone other than a white actor,” adds Amos.
Last summer, Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs went to a “big name” Hollywood producer and pitched a movie based on a novel about a young gambler who roams the country playing high-stakes games. The gambler is the only main character in the novel who is black, says Jacobs.
Several weeks later, he received a rejection letter from the producer that read in part: “If considered, choices would have to be made regarding target audience. Since [the main character] is black in the novel. . .a film directed toward a black audience in the manner of “Shaft” is one possibility.”
“Wait a minute!” Jacob screams, as he reads from the letter. “Where does it say this is a black film? Merely because a black person is in the lead, these people to think of it as a black project.” He is even more alarmed by an industry that still believes “if you are a black person in the lead of a film or series, it’s not going to work or make money because it’s a black project.”
Recent television series would suggest there are exceptions to Jacobs’ rule. And none of the black actors who were interviewed for this story is starving. But that’s not the issue, says Jacobs, who was one of the stars of Welcome Back, Kotter. “Sure we’re seeing more blacks on television, but the new thing is to have a black police captain and make him a third or fourth character. That’s become so commonplace it’s almost laughable. It’s tokenism.
It’s also one of the reasons why NBC started tapping into the “large and deep pool” of minority talent five years ago, to differentiate itself from the other networks. “We became strong in minority households because we were the ones who aired that population,” says Warren Littlefield, NCS senior vice-president of series, specials and variety programming.
“Other networks now look at The Cosby Show and say ‘Oh! Black-family comedies are now working’ and they go out and develop black-family comedies. They’re missing the point,” he explains. “The common denominator is that Bill Cosby is a major television star and a truly gifted performer. He delivers that show. It is not just another black sitcom.”
Singer-actress Leslie Uggams, who played Kizzy in Roots, thinks that blacks, especially black women, are being unnecessarily excluded from regular starring roles on nighttime soaps. “Except for Diahann Carroll of Dynasty, you never see a black person, not even in terms of background,” she says. “You should be able to see all kinds of different people.”
It wasn’t until two years after Roots that Uggams finally accepted a role, in Backstairs at the White House. “Most of the scripts I received were garbage. Even now it’s a struggle for me to land roles as an actress. Why? Because there are so few roles out there, especially for a black actress. And if I get one, it’s usually the ‘Hi-Bye’ parts or comedy.”
Even the singer-dancer-actor Ben Vereen (Chicken George in Roots) has had career frustrations. “I’ll want to read for a role I like, but they’ll say, ‘You can’t play that, you have to play the janitor. We want white actor for that.’ Why does he always have to be white? Sure, they can’t get away with things that they could nine years ago, but we’ve got to watch that we don’t regress. We must not forget the struggle goes on.”
It’s the same struggle that Georg Stanford Brown claims has gone on for the last 300 years, “And it’s still here, it still exists. We’re still out there struggling,” says the actor who portrayed Tom in Roots and is now an Emmy-winning director. The bottom line is yes, Roots should have meant so much more.”
One week after her audition at the Improv, Beverly Todd performed at Igby’s Comedy Cabaret in West Los Angeles. Her routine included a fictitious story about how for years the only role she could get was in a musical called “Ol’ Man Ribber in Hebben,” in which she played a shufflin’, singin’ and dancin’ parody of how black Americans once were portrayed by Hollywood. “The whole purpose of that routine is to point out the stereotypical roles black people have been offered in the past,” Todd explained off-stage.
As for the roles currently being offered, she and others ask only that the television industry reflect the society it serves by developing realistic portrayals. Only that. Nothing more. If you must depict a black American as a finger-poppin’ pimp, they say, they cast him next week as a politician or scientist or network executive.
On-stage at Igby’s, Todd had been teasing the audience. “I know since I’ve been up here, you’ve all been saying ‘Roots? Roots I don’t remember her from no Roots. What part did she play?” Todd paused. “I’m going to give you a hint.” She turned and modeled her left profile, then turned and modeled her right profile. “I played one of the slaves,” she quipped.
No one recognized her.
