Tenderness And Humanity Updates: In Miss Juneteenth, from first Channing Godfrey Peoples director, Nicole Beharie plays the role of Turquoise Jones, a young, hard-working, and old-fashioned queen who enters her growing daughter in the Miss Juneteenth pageant in hopes of preventing her from making the same mistakes she ever made.
The race is part of a grand celebration of the nineteenth holiday on June 19, commemorating the official end of slavery in 1865, two years after the proclamation of Emancipation.
Here, Beharie thinks about how he interacted with his character and the timely release of the film after a nationwide protest against racial injustice.
We read the scriptures, we see the tools and there are certain types of themes or archetypes that we see women all the time. But with this, I felt like there was a lot of heart.
Relationships made sense to me, and they were many. I got the script and tested it and sent a self-tape in. There was no offer. In fact, Channing was not really sold I think on my first tape.
He thought I was too young. So I took notes and made changes to my reading, which is something for all the characters out there: don’t get upset when someone has noted. It’s an opportunity to try something new. And it finally worked. And then when we had a conversation about his opinion, and who these people were, I was like, Oh, yes. I’m totally ready for that.
Tenderness And Humanity: Miss Juneteenth’s Nicole Beharie
My first thought was hard. This is a confession: often, it is easy for me to be like other people who write things, and they make it kind of away. They see Black women in a way. But I read it off the page and thought, Oh, you’ve been to them, you’ve done this, you’ve done that.
I lived in Atlanta, South Carolina, and in parts of Georgia and South Carolina in rural South. So, I thought of the other women in those positions and went my own way for that. And then I realized that there was an opportunity to continue to catch that, but also to do something with a more tender approach to it.
So, the character’s growth is really interesting. It can start in the same way in reading and then realize, wouldn’t it be much more fun if he were protected?
She doesn’t have to cry everywhere, but if you don’t ask about her gentleness, and how much she loves her daughter. Therefore, if someone reprimands you, it is not the same as being disciplined by your mother.
It’s her heart if you couldn’t hear her heart f-ing because you really love Kai. After that, it just blows differently. It just feels different.
That was something Channing was very supportive of, and he even started to motivate us when we were working. I just knew that from me I saw him hard and unstoppable and just passing, in, Ah, there is a chance of great compassion and humanity here besides that.
