Latest news with #TheJeffersons'
San Francisco Chronicle
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘Clean Slate,' the first sitcom to star a transgender actor, is canceled after one season
Amid a background of openly anti-transgender legislation and policies in American politics, the first ever sitcom starring a transgender performer and the last project from legendary progressive producer Norman Lear has been canceled. 'Clean Slate,' which premiered Feb. 6 on Prime Video, will end after season one. The news was revealed in an emotional guest column posted on Deadline on Friday, April 18, co-written by series star and transgender actor Laverne Cox, comedian and co-star George Wallace and co-creator Dan Ewen. 'We will push to keep the story alive, for the sake of the kind of people portrayed in it, the kind of people being legislated out of existence, or erased from history books,' the column said. 'It feels like it's time to fight like hell for nice things.' While Prime Video has not publicly revealed why it's scrapping the show, the streaming service is a division of Amazon, owned by Jeff Bezos, who has become a prominent donor and supporter of President Donald Trump's second term. In the president's first quarter, Trump has issued executive orders targeting transgender people, including barring trans athletes from playing in women's sports, and his administration has erased the mention of transgender people on government websites and passports. 'Clean Slate' stars Wallace as Harry, an Alabama car wash owner, who is surprised when his estranged son returns home after 17 years. Harry's child is now a proud trans woman named Desiree (Cox). Lear, known for progressive sitcoms such as 'All in the Family,' 'The Jeffersons' and 'Sanford and Son' that changed the face of television in the 1970s, signed on after Cox, Wallace and Ewen pitched the TV legend in the late 2010s. Together, they shepherded the project through a pandemic, Hollywood strikes and shifting broadcast partners. It was originally set up at Peacock before moving first to Amazon-owned Freevee before finally airing on Prime. What would be the only season had been entirely filmed by the time Lear died at age 101 in December 2023. 'Let it be known that Norman Lear's final comedy room was an intersectional, authentic thing of beauty, and the stuff of Marjorie Taylor Greene's nightmares,' the column said.
Washington Post
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
A group of Black Panthers helped launch ‘The Jeffersons' 50 years ago
Tired of seeing stereotypical portrayals of poor Black characters in TV shows like the 1970s sitcom 'Good Times,' several Black Panthers paid a visit to the show's creator, legendary TV writer and producer Norman Lear. 'Every time you see a Black man on the tube, he is dirt poor, wears s--t clothes, can't afford nothing. That's bulls---,' one of them told him, Lear recalled in his autobiography. In response, Lear created 'The Jeffersons,' which debuted a half-century ago this year. It presented the image of an upwardly mobile Black businessman, George Jefferson. Lear wrote that the Black Panthers had specific complaints about 'Good Times,' which portrayed a low-income, struggling Black family living in a Chicago public housing apartment. It starred comedian Jimmie Walker as J.J., whose exaggerated gestures and loud catchphrase 'Dy-no-mite!' rankled some of the other cast members, such as Esther Rolle, who played matriarch Florida Evans. 'I resent the imagery that says to Black kids that you can make it by standing on the corner saying 'Dy-no-mite!'' she told Ebony magazine in 1975. The actor who played the father on 'Good Times,' John Amos, also had some complaints, criticizing how the show portrayed African American families. For his efforts, his character was killed off the show. 'I left because I was told that my services were no longer needed because I had become a 'disruptive element,' ' Amos said years later. As Lear recounted the confrontation with the Black activists: One day three members of the Black Panthers, a militant civil rights group of the sixties and seventies, stormed into my offices at CBS saying they'd 'come to see the garbage man' — me. 'Good Times' was garbage, they said, and on they ranted: 'Show's nothing but a white man's version of a black family … Character of J.J. is a f***ing put down …' Hours later, Lear recalled, he told his associate Al Burton about their complaints, and they quickly got on the same page — a new spin-off show called 'The Jeffersons.' It was a natural progression for Lear, one of Hollywood's most outspoken liberals. George Jefferson, his wife Louise, and their son, Lionel, had already been characters on Lear's groundbreaking 1970s hit show 'All in the Family,' playing the Black neighbors of bigoted Archie Bunker in the working-class borough of Queens in New York. In George Jefferson, Archie had finally found his match, a fellow bigot who delighted in calling White people 'honky.' The opening credits of 'The Jeffersons' show George and Louise following a moving truck across the river to Manhattan to their posh new apartment, and ends with George famously strutting into his new high-rise building. The memorable gospel-style song 'Movin' on Up' provides the soundtrack: We're movin' on up To the East Side To a deluxe apartment in the sky … We finally got a piece of the pie 'The Jeffersons' starred Sherman Hemsley as George, the owner of a successful chain of dry-cleaning stores, and Isabel Sanford as Louise, whom George calls Weezy. Hemsley was told to play George 'pompous and feisty,' which he did, while adding a frenetic, fast-talking style. Adrien Sebro, a media studies professor at Chapman University in Orange, California, told The Post that shows like 'Good Times' had shown Black characters living working-class lives. 'With 'The Jeffersons,' they kind of flipped that to make it clear that we can see blackness in a different light that isn't just about the particular struggles to make it financially every episode,' he said. Sebro, author of the book 'Scratchin' and Survivin': Hustle Economics and the Black Sitcoms of Tandem Productions,' said that the show's portrayal of a successful Black businessman played a role in shaping Americans' views in the 1970s, noting that there were only three TV networks at the time. And he argued that 'The Jeffersons' — and specifically George Jefferson — helped lead to 1990s shows like 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' that also featured financially successful Black characters. 'Seeing this powerful Black man who take no mess, talks back to White people, has his own business,' helped inspire TV writers and creators of the late 1980s and 1990s shows, Sebro said. 'I think it created this allure and energy around Black culture that someone could be the George Jefferson of their neighborhood where you work at a laundromat or dry cleaners and you can maybe own one someday. It blended into this bootstraps ideology that's pervasive in American culture. He was the image of someone who made it through hard work.' In the documentary, 'Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise,' Harvard professor and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. said that in the 1970s, the increasing diversity of Black life was seen everywhere, especially on TV. Gates called George 'a dynamo Black businessman transported into the bastions of White privilege … a refreshing departure from traditional Black stereotypes. And part of a new, much wider range of Black characters on TV whose stories reflected our rapidly changing reality.' The new show took on racial stereotypes right from the start. In the first episode, Louise invites a maid who works in the building into her new apartment, but the maid mistakes Louise and George for a butler and maid. When they explain that they own the place, she laughs in disbelief. After she leaves the apartment, George diminishes her as a 'domestic' when Louise protests that the woman is her friend. 'You are East Side and she is West Side,' he declares in his signature booming voice that always seems to take up the entire room. 'And I don't want no crosstown traffic in my kitchen.' Later that episode, we meet the Jeffersons' neighbors, Tom and Helen Willis, the first interracial couple on TV, played by White actor Franklin Cover and Black actress Roxie Roker. In his memoir, Lear describes Cover as 'an extremely white comedic actor … because he had the kind of pure white face that didn't show the slightest sign of assimilation in any direction, at any time over the centuries.' The lumbering Tom would prove an easy verbal punching bag for the quick-witted and pugnacious George. Lear, who died in 2023 at age 101, knew that a mixed marriage could be a sensitive storyline not just for the TV audience, but possibly for cast members, too. He recalled giving Roker an out when he offered her the part of Helen. 'I told Roxie I thought America was ready for it,' he wrote, but also let her know that 'if she felt the least bit squeamish about it I would understand.' Instead, she whipped out her wedding photo. Next to Roker was her White husband, TV news producer Sy Kravitz. 'We've been married for nearly 15 years,' she told Lear. 'Does this answer your question?' Roker also shared a second photo showing their young son, Lenny Kravitz, who would go on to become a rock star. By the end of the second season of 'The Jeffersons,' the normally affable Tom has had it with George constantly calling him 'honky,' leading to one of the most uncomfortable scenes in sitcom history. 'How would you like it if I called you' the n-word, Tom yells, using the epithet. George and Louise recoil with shocked looks on their faces and gasps can be heard in the studio audience, along with some laughter. An irate George calls Tom out for using the slur, but Helen backs her man. 'That's no worse than honky!' she argues, unconvincingly. 'You're right,' George replies. 'Nothing's worse than honky except being married to one.' Years later, Helmsley revealed he didn't enjoy constantly putting down his TV neighbor. 'To say things in people's faces, name-calling, that wasn't me,' he said. Still, people of all stripes grew to adore the tightly wound, confrontational George. Once, Helmsley met a man in Texas who was excited to share his relative's views of the show. As the actor recalled with a laugh, the man told him, 'My grandfather loves your show. He LOVES you. He's the biggest bigot in Texas. But he loves you.'
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor Thanks Keke Palmer for ‘Making Me Famous,' Aaron Pierre Breaks Out Viral ‘Mufasa' Dance Moves and More Inside ABFF Honors
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor enjoyed a surprise early birthday celebration at the 2025 American Black Film Festival (ABFF) Honors ceremony on Monday night — complete with a cake, sparkling candles and the well-heeled crowd singing her 'Happy Birthday' (the Stevie Wonder version, of course). Ellis-Taylor was among the special honorees at the awards show, feted not just for turning another year older, but for delivering another year full of dazzling performances, including in the best picture Oscar-nominated film 'Nickel Boys.' Though the spotlight was on Elllis-Taylor, she seemed less interested in accepting her well-deserved flowers than in doling them out to her fellow honorees. More from Variety Taraji P. Henson Urges Black Creatives to 'Keep Telling Your Truth, Because It's All We Have' ABFF Honors to Salute Taraji P. Henson, Jeffrey Wright, Garrett Morris and Mara Brock Akil Kerry Washington Pays Tribute to Whitney Houston, Diahann Carroll at ABFF Honors 'Keke Palmer made me famous,' Ellis-Taylor declared as she took the stage at the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills to accept ABFF's Excellence in the Arts trophy from her 'Origin' director Ava DuVernay. A dozen years ago, Ellis-Taylor and Palmer — who was honored with the Renaissance Award for her varied career accomplishments thus far — co-starred in the Lifetime TV movie 'Abducted: The Carlina White Story.' According to Ellis-Taylor, Palmer and her mother Sharon Palmer fought to ensure that she had the opportunity to do meaty work that reached a wide audience. 'And I've been chasing that feeling ever since,' Ellis-Taylor said. 'Because it was the first time I felt the line between who I was and who I played merged.' Ellis-Taylor also saluted Marla Gibbs, the evening's Hollywood Legacy award honoree, explaining that one cannot be honored 'alongside' an icon like 'The Jeffersons' and '227' alum, 'because [she] will always be in the distance — unreachable, unmatched. She was my understanding of what it was to be a comedian. They had Carol Burnett. We had Marla Gibbs.' Then, she offered words of affirmation to Rising Star award winner Aaron Pierre, explaining that she only knew him by rumor, but that what she'd heard 'portends a world-changer.' She saved her final praise for Giancarlo Esposito, who picked up the evening's other Excellence in the Arts prize. 'I was born an agitator, probably. But there was no definition to it, until I saw you. I was given words to what was churning inside of me,' Ellis-Taylor said of watching Esposito in Spike Lee's 'Do the Right Thing.' His insightful and inciting quote ('How come you ain't got no brothers on that wall?') inspired her activism moving forward, as the film opened her eyes to the structural inequities that need to be addressed in the fight for equality. 'This is why these messages of 'another seat at the table' is deaf to me. I don't want to hear that. I'm not interested at no seat at no table. I don't want the seat or the table. I want the structure. I want the land that the structure belongs,' Ellis-Taylor preached. 'Why? Because it's mine. … Thank you ABFF, because you are encouraging me to tear down that wall, to tear down that house and reclaim the land.' Ellis-Taylor's rousing speech might've been the most potent of a night that felt more church revival than awards show. In fact, the black tie gala kicked off with the gospel choir from Victory Bible Church in Pasadena, Calif., singing a rousing rendition of 'The Best Is Yet to Come,' by Donald Lawrence and The Tri-City Singers, to honor the historically Black communities affected by the L.A. wildfires. The show, hosted by comedian Zainab Johnson, was packed with sincere moments, like Anthony Mackie sharing the advice Esposito gave him, a kid fresh off the boat from New Orleans, about how to be a successful working actor, decades before they were Marvel co-stars; or Palmer discussing the importance of creators owning their rightful share of their content; or a 93-year-old Gibbs saying that she's not done yet, and sharing her mantra: 'Long as you're still here and still breathing, you've got another shot.' But the event was far from a somber affair. Case in point, Pierre was played onto the stage to accept his award with the viral anthem, 'Aaron. Pierre. That's Mufasaaaa,' which was created by the crew of 'The Jennifer Hudson Show' for his 'Spirit Tunnel' entrance last December. In on the joke, Pierre gave the people what they wanted and gamely did his little dance — suavely two-stepping, spinning and high-fiving the trophy presenter, while the crowd clapped and sang along. Scroll on for a look inside the ceremony:
