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The women of “American Fiction” reflect on their unique bond
Though it’s the first time Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, Erika Alexander and Leslie Uggams have acted together in a film, they said making “American Fiction” felt like a homecoming.
“It’s a special film,” said Ross. “Feel very proud to be in it.”
Everyone agreed.
“I walked on the set and I just felt that we all belonged,” Uggams said.
Based on the 2001 novel “Erasure,” “American Fiction” stars Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison — a professor and frustrated author struggling to find his place in a literary world circumscribed by White perceptions of Black life. Monk’s frustration grows when he hears Rae’s character, Sinatra Golden, read a passage from her wildly successful book, which is riddled with every racial cliche imaginable.
As a joke, Monk assumes a pen name and writes a book awash in Black stereotypes. But the joke’s on him when it becomes a roaring success.
At its heart, “American Fiction” is about relationships. Alexander plays the divorcee who lives across the street.
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“If Sinatra is the object of his obsession, then I’m glad that I’m playing Coraline, the object of his desire,” said Alexander. “It’s a beautiful, mature relationship and love story blooming.”
It’s a family love story too, and, like in many families, love doesn’t come easy. Ross plays Monk’s sister, Lisa — the glue binding the family. Uggams is Agnes, their mother struggling with early-stage Alzheimer’s.
Off screen, there was a lot of love for their co-star. Rae mentioned “out-of-body moments” watching Wright work, while Alexander joked that she thought about kissing him “every day.
“He would be near the craft service table, and I’d mosey up and say, ‘Our scene is coming up.’ And he’d go, ‘Oh boy!'” she laughed.
Wright’s Monk is the central character, but he’s defined by the women around him. Ross, Rae, Alexander and Uggams said they saw that Black girl magic in the script by writer-director Cord Jefferson.
“It was on the page,” said Ross. “He allowed these women to be full people.”
“The brilliance of this film is that you have such a complete family story, one that isn’t seen and one that would be candidly hard to sell on its own,” Rae added.
Rae, Ross, Alexander and Uggams all had success playing accomplished women on television — roles they call the exception, not the rule.
“Sometimes, we’re reduced to plot devices,” said Rae. “And I think that what it is, is like, a lack of seeing us as human.”
“I’m not saying they’re doing it on purpose,” said Alexander. “But I do think that there’s something in it psychological … that wants to bring it back down to, you know, something that they can say is, ‘Oh, that’s more accessible.”
Uggams told us a movie like “American Fiction” would have been unthinkable when she started in show business seven decades ago. As a teenager, she became the first African American woman to appear as a regular on a TV variety show: “Sing Along with Mitch.”
“Oh my god, it was an event,” Uggams said of fanfare surrounding the series. “And the interesting thing about that is that the South had blacked us out. They wouldn’t take the show because of me being on the show.”
Uggams said she’s seen a lot of change since then.
“There’s more of us on television,” she said. “I mean, when I was starting it was, like, maybe one commercial, and that was usually, you know, Aunt Jemima on the pancake box kind of thing.”
In the 1990s, Alexander was a breakout star of the TV show “Living Single.” In 2016, Ross became the first Black woman in 30 years to get an Emmy nomination for best comedy actress for her role in “Black-ish.” That same year, Rae’s series “Insecure” debuted on HBO to much acclaim. They all give a nod to Uggams, who said having to break barriers has not felt a burden to carry.
“I’ve said, ‘I’m gonna blast through the door.’ And I’ve been doing that all my life. I don’t take no for an answer,” Uggams said, to a chorus of laughs from her co-stars. “So, it hasn’t been a burden for me. It’s been like, you know, marching up the steps. ‘Come on. Let’s go. Let’s go.”
“We want to showcase the best of us,” said Rae. “And I think it’s an insult, frankly, when we see what others thing of us. The burden is only in confronting that.”
“And if you look at Louis Armstrong, and if you look at Jimi Hendrix, and the blues, and the great Diana Ross, all you see are people who have defied the odds,” Alexander noted. “And so that’s our birthright. That’s our legacy. But I just feel that if we can do anything to lessen the burden so people can actually get on with their creativity, that’s what I think our job is. To make it easier for them to be funded and found.”
“I think that is happening,” said Ross. “Wish it would happen faster.”
“American Fiction” is on a fast track. It already had garnered several awards and nominations this season when it earned five nominations for the Academy Awards.
“Award shows are complicated things,” said Ross. “The reality is they open doors in terms of the business. All of sit here. We’re four women that have made our way through. But the amount of other women that have not been given accolades or even a seat with the work that they’ve done…so, yes. It is an honor. It’s a treat. But it also does not validate who we are.”
The following is a transcript of an interview with Sen. Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that aired on Oct. 6, 2024.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Joining us now is Arizona’s Democratic Senator, Mark Kelly. He’s in Detroit this morning on the campaign trail for the Harris campaign. Good morning to you, Senator.
SEN. MARK KELLY: Good morning, Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to talk to you about Arizona, but let’s start in Michigan, which is where you are right now. And it is going to be such a key state to a potential Harris or Trump victory. Vice President Harris is facing challenges among black men, working class people, as well as the Muslim and Arab populations skeptical of the White House support for Israel’s wars. What are you hearing on the ground there from voters?
SEN. KELLY: Well, my wife, Gabby Giffords, and I have been out here for a couple days. We’ve been campaigning across the country, Michigan, I’ve been in North Carolina, Georgia as well. I’ll be back to Arizona here soon. The vice president was out here speaking to Muslim organizations and the Arab community about what is at stake in this election and addressing the concerns that they have. What we’re hearing, issues about the economy, about gun violence, about, you know, supporting American families and the difference between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. You know, Kamala Harris, who has a vision for the future of this country, Donald Trump, who just wants to drag us backwards.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Today in Dearborn, Michigan, there’s a funeral service for an American man who was killed in Lebanon by an Israeli airstrike. It just underscores how that community you’re talking about out in Michigan feel some of what’s happening in a personal way to their community. Given how close this race is, do you think this war and the expectation it could escalate could cost Democrats both a seat in the Senate and potentially the presidency?
SEN. KELLY: Margaret, nobody wants to see escalation and it’s tragic when any innocent person, whether it’s an American or Palestinian, lose their life in a conflict. Tomorrow’s one year since October 7th, when Israel was violently attacked. Israel has a right to defend itself, not only from Hamas, but from Hezbollah and from the Iranians. But, you know, I and my wife, you know, we feel for the community here who’s been affected by this. And that’s why the vice president was out here earlier, a few days ago, meeting with that community.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But it’s a live issue.
SEN. KELLY: Yeah, sure. I mean, there is an ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Israel is, you know, fighting a war now on, I think it’s fair to say, two fronts and then being attacked by the Iranians as well. And, they- they need to defend themselves, and we need to support our Israeli ally. At the same time, when women and children lose their life, innocent people in a conflict, it is- it is tragic.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You do sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee and so I know you know how intense the efforts are by foreign actors to try to manipulate voters going into November. Just this Friday, Matthew Olsen, the lead on election threats at the Department of Justice, told CBS the Russians are, quote, highlighting immigration as a wedge issue. That is such a key issue in Arizona. Are you seeing targeted information operations really focusing in on Arizonans right now?
SEN. KELLY: Not only in Arizona, in other battleground states. It’s the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and it’s significant. And we need to do a better job getting the message out to the American people that there is a huge amount of misinformation. If you’re looking at stuff on Twitter, on TikTok, on Facebook, on Instagram, and it’s political in nature, and you may- might think that that person responding to that political article or who made that meme up is an American. It could be- it could look like a U.S. service member. There is a very reasonable chance I would put it in the 20 to 30% range, that the content you are seeing, the comments you are seeing, are coming from one of those three countries: Russia, Iran, China. We had a hearing recently, with the FBI director, the DNI, and the head of the National Security Agency. And we talked about this. And we talked about getting the word out. And it’s up to us, so thank you for asking me the question, because it’s up to us, the people who serve in Congress and the White House to get the information out there, that there is a tremendous amount of misinformation in this election, and it’s not going to stop on November 5th.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Understood. And we will do our best to help parse that for viewers. But on the topic of the border, President Biden did announce just this past week new regulations to keep in place that partial asylum ban that he rolled out back in June. That’s what’s credited with helping to bring down some of the border crossing numbers in recent weeks. It was supposed to be a temporary policy, dependent on how many people were crossing at a time. Do you think this is the right long term policy, or is this just a gimmick to bring down numbers ahead of the election?
SEN. KELLY: Well, the right long term policy is to do this through legislation. And we were a day or two away from doing that, passing strong border security legislation supported by the vice president, negotiated by the vice president, and the president and his Department of Homeland Security, with Democrats and Republicans–
MARGARET BRENNAN: But this is not legislation.
SEN. KELLY: –This is bipartisan. This isn’t. But the legislation was killed by Donald Trump. We were really close to getting it passed. That’s the correct way to do this. When you can’t do that, Margaret, when a former president interrupts the legislative process the way he did, which is the most hypocritical thing I’ve ever seen in my three and a half years in the Senate. After that happened, the only other option is executive actions. And this has gone from what was chaos and a crisis at our southern border to somewhat manageable. And if you’re the border- Border Patrol, you know, this is this- you need this. I mean, otherwise it is unsafe for Border Patrol agents, for CBP officers, for migrants, for communities in southern Arizona. So it’s unfortunate that this was the- these were the steps that had to be taken.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay.
SEN. KELLY: But that’s because the former president didn’t allow us to do this through legislation.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Senator, we have to leave it right there. Face the Nation will be right back.
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Sen. Mark Kelly says Americans need to know about “huge amount of misinformation” on election
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