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That may well be just as the universe intended. After all, I’d asked God to guide me and make it so that I would be able to stretch and evolve in my work, avoiding the pitfalls that could come with being typecast into roles. The St. Vincent character was a pregnant prostitute, just like my character in Hustle & Flow. Maybe my not getting the role was God’s way of protecting me. Or setting me up for something even better. As it goes, Theodore Melfi had another intriguing project that was even more perfect than the first, and he insisted on casting me as the lead in it. In his sophomore directorial project, Hidden Figures, I play Katherine Johnson, the brilliant mathematician who, along with her colleagues Dorothy Vaughan, portrayed by Octavia Spencer, and Mary Jackson, played by Janelle Monáe, leaped gender, race, and professional boundaries to undertake one of the greatest operations in American history: the launching and safe return of the astronaut John Glenn into and out of space. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t know anything about Katherine or her accomplishments until Theodore approached me with the role, but once I got my hand on the story, did my research, and actually met Katherine, all I could ask was, “Why didn’t I know about her and her accomplishments until now?” Little girls, regardless of race, need to know about and celebrate her, Dorothy, and Mary for their genius. Instead, history has erased them. As it turns out, discounting and forgetting the power of women in general and black women in particular is not the sole province of Hollywood.
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Perhaps my most meaningful role, though, is that which I’ve become most known for. Playing Cookie makes me feel as if the women I know, the women I grew up around and grew into, are finally getting some shine—but in a much more nuanced way than what is typically afforded a black actress who plays what could be considered a stereotypical role. I’m not deluded for one second into thinking that there isn’t a contingent of folk who speed right past the Fox dial on Wednesday nights, convinced that there’s nothing useful to see in Cookie’s character, and, by extension, the person who portrays her. Hell, I was scared and leery of her in the beginning, too. But I quickly came to embrace Cookie because she is, to some extent, me. I’m that girl with whom everyday woman identifies. I’m that struggle. Hell, I’m the American dream. I didn’t go to an Ivy League school, I didn’t study at Juilliard, I didn’t grow up in a mansion. I came from the goddamn hood and put myself through Howard University. I studied Shakespeare and August Wilson, until I made something of myself. That’s the story of every girl who goes to work every day, punching in at nine in the morning and hustling home at five in the evening. I’m not some fantasy. I’m tangible. And I bring that realness not only to the screen, where it deserves to be, but also out into the world.
And I do mean the world. I’ve come a long way since those dark nights in the Embassy Suites where I stayed while filming The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, hyping myself up through the anger and vowing to show and prove I had the goods to be considered a top-tier actress. Now the world knows my work as Cookie—not just in the streets of southeast DC, or in Harlem or Chicago and Detroit or Houston or New Orleans or up and down the western seaboard, but on television sets in Germany, Australia, France, the UK, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, South Africa, China, Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong. Not since The Cosby Show has a US drama with an African American cast made it this big outside of America, and I’m riding the wave, pleased as all get-out with what comes with those open arms. I’ll never forget the energy of the room when, after screening two episodes of Empire and giving an hour-long talk to an all-French audience in Paris, Lee surprised everyone by bringing me onto the stage. That thunderous applause, the hooting and hollering and the standing ovation, made me burst into tears. But what was even more heartening was that the audience members really understood my character; they got her. They weren’t asking me about Cookie’s fashion choices or how she wears her hair or what kind of shenanigans the cast gets into behind the set; they made nuanced, insightful queries into Cookie’s psyche. They wanted to know from where she drew her strength and how she managed to stay in prison for seventeen years and come out unbroken. The level of questioning was deep and made clear to me that they didn’t just watch the show, they embraced it.
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I’ve worked hard on the screen, but of late, I’m finding joy working behind the scenes, too. I cut my producing teeth on No Good Deed, a crime thriller in which I starred opposite Idris Elba. To me, it was an obvious hit: a handsome, charming stranger gets into a car accident and goes to the home of a lonely mom seeking help; she lets him in, and all hell breaks loose. It was formulaic, yes, but what made the film unique was its stars: two African American leads, which is rare in a crime thriller. Getting No Good Deed on the screen was no easy feat; Sony/Screen Gems president Clint Culpepper and producer Will Packer would get behind it only if my leading man was a bankable star. Idris, whose talent and sex appeal come with a built-in audience of rabidly supportive fans, was an obvious choice, but also a hard sell. Our filming was set to start at the same time as when he was scheduled to star in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, his award-winning role as the late South African leader; as the executive producer, I was tasked with figuring out how to turn Idris’s fast no into a slow yes. Let’s just say it took some hustling, brutish muscle, and a whole lot of promises made so that I could convince the studio to work around Idris’s Mandela schedule. But the real work came in convincing Idris himself to cram in the filming of my movie just days, literally, before he took off to work in South Africa.