The sass of '94: the barefaced cheek and spine-tingling nerve of actress Jada Pinkett - Interview

Interview, Sept, 1994 by Karen Brailsford

When she's not in front of a camera, Jada Pinkett gesticulates even more animatedly than when she is. Her hands fly--fist pounding palm--her fingers snap to emphasize her words, and her voice ebbs and flows into a drawl that is part middle-class Baltimore, part homegirl. After two years on NBC's A Different World, she has graduated to movie roles that showcase her sass, her smarts, her edge. In last year's Menace II Society, directed by Allen and Albert Hughes, she was a young mother in Watts struggling to rear a man-child in the promised land. Next came The Inkwell, in which she portrayed, in her own words, "a snooty don't-know-nothing" not far from the girls she grew up with in Maryland. She has since played muse to a troubled Allen Payne in this month's romantic and explosively violent Jason's Lyric and Keenan Ivory Wayans's "secretary dash housekeeper dash cook" in the upcoming comedy adventure Lowdown Dirty Shame. When I met her in her trailer on the set of the horror flick Demon Knight in July, Pinkett literally glowed. Her skin is golden, complementing her greenish eyes, and her hair, well, it's also golden now.

KAREN BRAILSFORD: I read somewhere that you had a new look.

JADA PINKETT: I just keep, you know, rolling, surprising folks. The new look is not really a specific look, though. It's a specific feeling that Jada has about herself these days.

KB: What's the feeling?

JP: Just being tuned-on to myself, and doing what Jada wants to do, which gives me as an individual a whole new vibe. And so, if I want to dye my hair blond, I'll dye my hair blond. Actually, I specifically dyed my hair blond for this role. It was something I thought would really work for my character.

KB: Tell me about Demon Knight.

JP: It's about this key that holds the power to all the goodness in the world, which the evil energies are trying to get their hands on. My character, Jeryline, was a street urchin, boostin', selling clothes on the street, what have you, and got caught. [beats fist into palm] I conquer all evil and take on the responsibility of this key.

KB: So you're the heroine!

JP: [laughs] Now that's something else--a black woman saves the day!

KB: Is that why you took the part?

JP: Yeah! I said, "Shoot, when will I get an opportunity to do something like this again?" And there's the fact that I wanted to work with Ernest Dickerson. He's a black filmmaker who's not necessarily doing black films. So it's not just this tunnel realism stuck in the 'hood.

KB: How do you feel about the urban roles you have played?

JP: When I first read Menace II Society, I didn't want to do it. It was very violent, and I just didn't get it. And then I talked to the Hughes brothers and they changed all that around. When I really started to look at my character, Ronnie, I realized that for the first time you're seeing a young, responsible single mother. I said, "Daaaamn." Most of the time black women within that element are drug addicts, hookers, loudmouths, what have you. I had to give the brothers props.

KB: Since it was your first film role, one would've thought you'd immediately jump at it.

JP: It's so funny you should say that. I remember being offered a role for an NBC pilot. My agent and I sat down for a long time, and he was, like, "You don't have to do this. Your time is going to come." And I knew it was going to come.

KB: How?

JP: It's just the feeling you get when you've got faith in yourself. When you are true to yourself, then the truth appears in front of you. [more fist-into-palm action] So I didn't take the role, and that pilot didn't get picked up. But two weeks later I got A Different World, which was my stepping-stone.

KB: What appealed to you about your character in the show?

JP: Lena James was a ruffian, from the streets of Baltimore.

KB: You're from Baltimore. Were you also a ruffian?

JP: During high school, after my grandmother passed on and my parents got divorced, I was out there. That's where I was coming from at the time I was up for A Different World. They said they needed someone with a little edge, so they based Lena on me.

KB: You said you were "out there," but were you going to school or acting?

JP: I barely graduated.

KB: Did you ever get into trouble with the law?

JP: No dirt of my own. Being in a stolen car, something stupid like that. Nothing major.

KB: So how did you get from there to here?

JP: My mother said, "You've got to go to school." She packed my stuff up and drove me to college.

KB: You could have done nothing there, though.

JP: Yeah, for a little while I was resentful. But I was in the midst of things that I really liked to do--my art--so that's what got me on track.

KB: Your characters have mostly been strong black women. One could argue that these are stereotypes.

JP: It depends on how you play it. A lot of the roles are stereotypical. When I first saw this role [in Demon Knight] I was, like "Puh-leeeze."

KB: What does Jada, then, bring to a character?

JP: I bring nothing special, just very human reality. Like with Ronnie in Menace, I could've done, like, the head rolling, the hands on the hips. But that's not real. You don't play caricatures, you play characters.