BLACK LIGHTNING “The Book of Consequences: Chapter One: Rise of the Green Light Babies” — (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET) (Content Rating TBD) (HDTV)
ROBERT TOWNSEND, BILL DUKE AND ANGELA RYE GUEST STAR – Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams) and his family may have survived Tobias’s (Marvin Jones III) attack, but they’re not out of the woods yet. Concerned for the safety of Garfield’s students, the board considers a motion to shut down the school, forcing Jefferson to go to Napier Frank (guest star Robert Townsend) to sway the vote. Jennifer (China Anne McClain) struggles with her powers and her actions have unforeseen repercussions. Meanwhile, Anissa (Nafessa Williams) finds a new way to give back to Freeland. Lastly, Lynn (Christine Adams) continues her quest much to the dismay of Agent Odell (guest star Bill Duke). Damon Gupton and James Remar also star. The episode was directed and written by Salim Akil (#201). Original airdate 10/9/2018.
They call us heroes, but the real heroes are you, the people who, despite the everyday struggles of life, continue to find hope, meaning, and purpose in what can be a challenging world.
The war on black Americans is real. The extrajudicial killing of black men and women by police has become disturbingly commonplace. So, too, are the instances of white people calling the police on black people who are doing ordinary things: barbequing at a local picnic ground; sitting in a Starbucks waiting for friends; turning in coupons at a supermarket or drugstore; or, if they are black women students, hanging out on their majority-white college campuses, like Smith, eating lunch or studying in a quiet corner.
Black Lightning is fighting back against all of that—to critical and audience raves.
The CW’s latest superhero drama is part of out gay showrunner Greg Berlanti’s Arrowverse, a compendium of series based on DC Comics. Black Lightning was developed by Salim Akil and combines Afro-futurism with black American life for a vivid, honest, and utterly compelling TV series. At the heart of the story is the Pierce family. Anissa Pierce (Nafessa Williams) is a teacher and the older daughter of beloved school principal Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams, no relation to Nafessa), who is also the eponymous superhero, Black Lightning.
Anissa’s younger sister, Jennifer (China Anne McClain), is a high school student and the superhero Lightning. Annisa is the superhero Thunder. Anissa is also a lesbian. The first black lesbian superhero on TV. The crime-fighting trio is focused on controlling corruption and stopping the dangerous influence of a local gang, which is engaged in everything from drugs to sex trafficking.
Curve caught up with Nafessa Williams on a broiling-hot August afternoon in Philadelphia, the city where she grew up, to talk about what it’s like to inhabit this groundbreaking new role. Williams was warm, engaging, and eager to talk about playing America’s first black lesbian superhero in a year in which black superheroes have been breaking box office and ratings records and spawning a whole new category at the Oscars.
At 28, Williams has already co-starred on two soaps, The Bold and the Beautiful and One Life to Live, as well as two prime-time series, Showtime’s reboot of Twin Peaks and CBS’s Code Black, and has appeared in nearly a dozen films. But Williams’s role in Black Lightning isn’t like anything else she’s done—–nor is it like anything else we’ve seen on TV.
“I got an audition about this superhero,” she explains, “and I fell in love with the strong, bold characters.”
Williams says it was always on her “dream vision board” to work with both show creator Salim Akil and co-executive producer Mara Akil, whose work she’s long admired for their relatable characters and strong story lines. “I knew I could trust what they would give us. I knew the characters would be authentic.”
She read for the part with Cress Williams—“I’m honored to be playing his daughter and to be working with him, he’s awesome to work with”—and everything just synched. There’s nothing jaded about Williams—she’s not one of those actors. That she is thrilled to be playing Anissa / Thunder is apparent as she talks about all the aspects of working on the groundbreaking series. Williams also loves having the opportunity to model strength and realness for black girls and for the LGBT community.
“I didn’t have superheroes who looked like me when I was growing up,” Williams says. “We need to see superheroes with hair like ours and bodies like ours and skin like ours.”
Williams says she’s proud to portray a lesbian superhero and have the fact of her sexuality be an accepted aspect of who she is right from the show’s premiere. There’s no conflict over Anissa’s lesbianism—she’s already there, with a girlfriend, in bed, mostly naked, when the series opens. Anissa and her girlfriend Chenoa (Shein Mompremier) are kissing and joking with each other when things turn serious. Chenoa wants more. Anissa isn’t ready. What Chenoa doesn’t know is that Anissa is a superhero. It’s not something Anissa knows how to talk to herself about yet, let alone anyone else.
It’s lesbian drama with such verisimilitude that every lesbian watching will be nodding along. But Williams knows there’s more to that authenticity than just the scenes themselves.
“Being able to give a voice to LGBT youth—that’s important,” Williams asserts. “We need to see a black superhero who is a lesbian, who looks like us.”
Williams explains that Anissa has been out as a lesbian since she was a teenager, and that her parents accept it. “I hope parents of LGBT youth can be inspired to be like that, like Anissa’s parents. That they are open and accepting is so important, and I think Black Lightning is putting out a message of love with that. It wasn’t a big ordeal, there wasn’t a big coming-out moment. I hope that families of lesbian women will see that.”
Williams says she felt “it was my duty to tell that story.”
Anissa’s breakup with Chenoa is harsh; meeting Grace is sexy and exciting. The audience witnesses her love of and appreciation for women. For her part, Williams says playing a lesbian character has been quite different from her previous acting experiences. “I’ve always been opposite men” on screen, she says.
The familial bonds in the series matter to Williams, too, who says it’s “so important to witness strong black characters in a strong black family. Our series shows a strong black single father raising two daughters. We all love each other and take care of each other.”
In the series premiere, Jefferson is pulled over for driving while black and Anissa wants to challenge the police, but he tells her not to. The hyper-realism of the scene is as heart-pumping as any of the superhero moments. The audience knows that it could go many ways—some of them deadly.
Unlike many series, Black Lightning doesn’t use Anissa’s lesbianism as a trope—it’s genuine, just as it was in the DC Comics. Anissa’s relationships are blatantly sexual—there’s no pretense or fade-outs. The kissing, the emotion, the pillow talk—it’s relatable and believable. The first relationship didn’t work out, after Anissa discovered her superpowers. “we grew apart because Anissa couldn’t talk about who she really was.”
But then Anissa meets Grace Choi (Chantal Thuy), another superhero.
Williams hopes that season two will open up Anissa’s love life. “I want to see more of Grace, to see the show develop more of that relationship and Anissa’s love life. But she’s also learning about her powers, and that’s going to play a big role.” Once Anissa becomes Thunder, things change for her—and they did for Williams as well. Thunder wears an amazing neoprene suit that Williams explains takes about half an hour to get into. It’s a no-nonsense superhero outfit, of which Williams says, “It’s strong and I look ready for action, ready to kick ass. It’s not a dress. It’s not about being sexy, it’s about power. It’s tactical. Thunder is ready to take names.”
The experience of becoming that superhero when she first put on the outfit, though, Williams describes as “a moment. I cried the first time I put it on.”
The actor explains how it was “so emotional for me because I have never had a superhero who looked like me. I was so overwhelmed when I realized I was going to become that for little black girls. So yes—I cried.”
Williams’s deep relationship to her character comes through in many ways, both huge and subtle. In one scene, she’s buying lingerie and corrects the salesclerk who refers to the person she’ll be modeling it for as “he.” “She,” Anissa declares. In another scene she’s in her bed, hair pulled back, researching super powers on her laptop. She can be both flirt and nerd.
Williams says, “I love how bold my character is and how she walks in her truth. She’s this young character finding her way, discovering all her powers.”
Of Black Lightning she says the show has allowed Anissa / Thunder to be fully realized in all her facets—including her lesbianism. “We are not afraid to push the envelope.”
The role—and its heavy responsibility—has changed Williams, too. The impact of the series in both the black and the LGBT community has been enormous. Williams says, “As an actor, I am an activist. I feel like I am doing my part in sparking change. I found myself becoming an advocate for LGBT youth, especially.” Williams says she hopes that the way Anissa is comfortable with her lesbianism will resonate with young people watching the series.
If there’s a main message Williams wants to impart in her role as Anissa / Thunder, it is for people “to be their own superheroes. Teachers, nurses, artists, actors, students, whoever you are—walk in your truth. Follow your dreams fearlessly.That is our duty and purpose, to walk as boldly as Anissa does—she gets it done!”
Williams gets it done, too. Thunder is the black lesbian superhero we’ve needed and wanted and Nafessa Williams is walking boldly in that role—for all of us.
Season two of Black Lightning premieres Oct. 9 on the CW.
Hers isn’t a household name yet, but actress Chantal Thuy’s growing body of artistic work will undoubtedly win her many more fans soon. Among her various projects, she has a recurring role on The CW’s Black Lightning, DC Comics’ first ever TV show centered on an African American superhero.
Chantal plays bartender, bookstore staffer, and comic book geek Grace Choi, a bisexual Asian American woman who has a budding romance with one of the title character’s two daughters, a medical student named Anissa Pierce (played by Nafessa Williams). Grace’s special powers have yet to manifest on the show, but her back story is laid out in the DC Comics source material; she’s half-Amazonian, giving her a common ancestry with Wonder Woman. Thus, in the comics, she possesses superhuman strength, endurance, and self-healing. Hopefully, we’ll see her powers at work on the TV version of Black Lightning this season!
FEMINIST ASIAN DAD: You’ve gotten quite a response from viewers who identify as LGBTQ. What’s that been like?
Chantal: I’m moved by the support and love from Black Lightning fans in the LGBTQ community. They are my favorite people in the world, and I want to give them so much love! I’m super proud and honored to play Grace Choi and to do my part to give them voice and visibility, especially young LGBTQ women of color.
What is one bit of fan feedback about Grace being bisexual that has been particularly meaningful for you?
I understand how identifying as bisexual is still confusing for society, and that some people don’t think it’s a legit thing. But it is! I remember years ago reading an article arguing that we all fall somewhere on the sexual orientation spectrum. It’s important to me that I am neither straight nor a lesbian; I am bisexual, and that is its own thing. I’ve loved hearing from fans how much it’s meant to them to hear that proudly and unequivocally spoken.
Grace is one of only four Asian sheroes on TV with superpowers in their storylines, along with Daisy Johnson on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Clarice Fong on The Gifted, and Nico Minoru on Runaways. What’s that felt like for you, to be in such a select group repping Asian North American women?
That statistic is shocking! For real, are there that few Asian American female superheroes on network TV? Hopefully the success of Crazy Rich Asians, Searching, and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before shows networks that Asians can be television leads, have a voice, and kick ass.
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You’ve put in quite a few air miles in the service of your profession. Black Lightning takes you to Atlanta, all the way across the country. It all exemplifies how acting takes a lot of commitment! What advice would you give to someone who wants to be an actor? (In particular, I’m thinking about the two girls, ages 12 and 9, who live in my household.)
Yes, the air miles! I am so grateful to Black Lightning for my air miles.
But seriously, I think with any craft, you need persistence, discipline, commitment, and the willingness to bring yourself to your work. I always remember the Malcolm Gladwell quote that it takes 10,000 hours to master any art or craft. I believe that.
Stella Adler helped to really shape my expectations – that the goal of an artist is to be a working actor. It’s not about accumulating wealth, or likes, or being famous. The path of the artist is a marathon, with plenty of ups and downs. But as long as we keep growing, and giving ourselves to our art form, there is some satisfaction and a sense of purpose.
“Growth as an actor and as a human being are synonymous.” I’ll never forget that. Our primary skill and duty as an actor involves caring, understanding, and awareness – to be a human being to others in this world.
“The Pierce family and the city of Freeland will have to deal with the consequences of the introduction of the drug Green Light and the discovery of Martin Proctor’s experiments. … In this new season there will be an introduction of a new character who will be Lynn’s co-worker, who will challenge Lynn in many new ways our other character’s haven’t to the point Lynn starts to question if she’s the woman she needs to be for her family.”
BLACK LIGHTNING officially got nominated for the People’s Choice Awards for Sci-Fi/Fantasy Show of 2018! What can you do to show your support?
1) Retweet this post from the official People’s Choice Twitter account so your vote will count. You can also make your own tweets, using the hashtags #BlackLightning and #TheScifiFantasyShow. Each individual Twitter account is allowed a maximum of 25 votes for each category per day. Retweeting posts made by other Twitter users also counts for the voting process.
RULES FOR THE TWITTER METHOD: Your account must be set to public in order for votes to count; you must have an avatar other than the default one provided to you when you first made the account; you must have more than 10 followers; and the account must have been created at least 24 hours prior to the time of the applicable voting post. In addition, you can only vote for one nominee per tweet, or else those votes will not count! Misspellings also won’t count, so make sure #BlackLightning and #TheScifiFantasyShow, as well as any other words provided in your tweet, are both spelled properly. See the official voting rules page for more information.
2) Vote for Black Lightning on the E! Online website. In order for your vote to be submitted, you must log in with your email address. Similar to the Twitter voting method, E! Online allows you to vote in one category multiple times per day per email address, and each user is allowed up to a maximum of 25 votes per day, according to the voting rules page. You are also allowed to nominate people for other categories, so if you would like to nominate the overall show or a specific actor/actress for any of the other remaining categories, feel free to do so. Just scroll all the way down to where it says “Enter a nominee not listed above,” type in the appropriate write-in nominee, and click “Vote.” Make sure you are spelling the name of the show + the actors’/actresses’ names properly when submitting a write-in.
3) Vote on the E! News App, available in both the Apple Store and Google Play. Once you have the app downloaded, just follow the instructions provided for you.
4) Vote on Facebook using the hashtags #BlackLightning and #TheScifiFantasyShow, keeping in mind of the same rules/tips provided previously. Similar to the Twitter method, make sure your hashtags are spelled properly, and encourage others to share your posts, make their own posts, and spread the word about the voting process.
The nomination voting window lasts from September 5th to September 14th at 11:59 E.T., and from there, the main voting window opens on September 24th. If you would like to see Black Lightning advance to the main voting period, continue to spread the word and encourage as many people to vote as possible.
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