Jaw-droppingly star-studded and stuffed with incredible stories, this series is a joy to watch. Just wait till you hear the one about James Brown burying bags of cash in the woods …
Denzel Washington. Don Cheadle. Morgan Freeman. Laurence Fishburne. Idris Elba. Viola Davis. Halle Berry. Cynthia Erivo. Angela Bassett. Octavia Spencer. To say that the cast of Apple’s new two-part, feature-length documentary series is stacked would be an understatement, and that truly is only a smattering of its many interviewees: I’d be here all week if I listed every single one. A celebration of black excellence in Hollywood, these two films are produced by the likes of Jamie Foxx and Kevin Hart, and stuffed full of household names who have made it to that coveted No 1 spot on the call sheet – in other words, the top-billed star of a production. They also offer a potted history of how black actors came to thrive in Hollywood – and the struggle baked into almost every stage of that process.
Episode one focuses on male stars, juxtaposing more established names with a new generation of actors, such as Michael B Jordan, John Boyega, Daniel Kaluuya and the late Chadwick Boseman. We start, though, with Sidney Poitier, and the debt that so many performers feel towards the pioneering star of In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Director Reginald Hudlin cleverly segues between archive footage and new interviews, as we observe Washington’s tribute to Poitier on stage at the Oscars in 2002 (the former won best actor, while the latter picked up an honorary Academy award). Present-day Washington then adds more colour to the story, namechecking the stars who Poitier had in turn tipped his hat to: James Edwards, Canada Lee, Paul Robeson and – of course – Hattie McDaniel, the first black Oscar winner (in 1940, for Gone With the Wind), whose story we return to in the “women” episode.
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