This narrative blazes in theater, film, and television, where a few women have kicked down the door while furthering the progress women of color in the present and future by taking matters into their own hands.
As a veteran theater and entertainment professional for over 40 years, Tony Winner LaChanze is currently a producing partner with Marylee Fairbanks on the new Broadway musical “The Outsiders,” which received 12 Tony Award nominations including Best Musical in 2024, along with “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” (five 2024 Tony nominations, including Best Play) and “Here Lies Love” (four 2024 Tony nominations). LaChanze, as President of Black Theatre United, a community of creatives dedicated to awareness, accountability, and advocacy, worked with the Shubert and Nederlander Organizations to rename the Cort Theatre to the James Earl Jones Theatre and the Brooks Atkinson Theatre as the Lena Horne Theatre.
In addition to producing, Black women directors, playwrights and choreographers like Schele Williams (“The Wiz,” “The Notebook”), Patricia McGregor (artistic director of New York Theatre Workshop), Dominique Morriseau (“Ain’t Too Proud,” “Skeleton Crew”), Lynn Nottage (“Ruined”) and Camille A. Brown (“For Colored Girls,” “Once on This Island”), LaTanya Richardson-Jackson (“A Piano Lesson”) have been shaking things up since Lorraine Hansberry hit the scene with A Raisin in The Sun.
“The Idea of You” instantly became a bestseller and social media juggernaut with its storyline around a 40-year-old woman in an age-gap love affair. What most people don’t know is the scorching hot tale was created by actress Robinne Lee. A Yale and Columbia Law School graduate who has enjoyed major film success in hits like “Deliver Us from Eva,” “Hitch,” and two films in the “Fifty Shades” franchise, her book was adapted into a hit film starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine. At 49, it looks like Robinne had the last laugh, with a seismic shift of a character whose age proves no limits to what relationships can be depicted on screen (or for Lee as an author/actress off-screen).
When Diahann Carroll hit the small screen in “Julia,” the Black community was elated as we could finally witness a Black woman as the lead of a network television program for the first time. Since then, Shonda Rhimes has created a plethora of opportunities for Black actresses, including the wildly popular “Scandal” starring Emmy nominee Kerry Washington. Washington has picked up the mantle, starring in Hulu’s “Unprisoned” and producing “Reasonable Doubt” through her company Simpson Street, starring Emayatzy Corinealdi.