BEST OF TASTY CLIPS: It’s primetime for Erika Alexander’s return to teleivision
By Bill Vaughan
Entertainment Writer
ERIKA ALEXANDER has come a long way since co-starring in hit 1990s sitcoms “Living Single” and “The Cosby Show.” Since then, her credits have bulged with memorable roles in streaming series “Wu-Tang: An American Saga,” “Run the World,” “Invasion,” and a part in the 2024 feature “American Fiction,” which earned her nominations as Best Supporting Actress from both the NAACP Image Awards and Independent Spirit Awards.
When she spoke to TASTY CLIPS in 2017, she was bringing that emotional heft in an arc on the OWN drama “Queen Sugar,” as Hollywood’s fragile secret wife. And earlier, she commanded the screen in a brief yet pivotal turn in the breakout hit, “Get Out.”
“That role’s done good things for me and bad,” Alexander said. “I go through the TSA and they give me hell. So It holds me up now on flights. I have to put in an extra 10 minutes to explain things to them.”
At the time, she was promoting Jody Lambert’s unsung “Brave New Jersey,” a comedic look at a small town’s reaction to Orson Welles‘ legendary 1938 “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast, which led millions of listeners to believe the U.S. was being invaded by Martians.
“It was the best scripts I read that year,” said Alexander of the piece. “It’s very hard to find roles that are beautifully done on the page that hadn’t gone out to another star. I haven’t made that cut in a long time, so you’re surprised that a Kerry Washington or Octavia Spencer hadn’t already taken it and that they’re actually looking at other people. I was hoping to do it and glad I got the chance.”
Her latest chance offers a return to network television in NBC’s “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins” starring Tracy Morgan, Daniel Radcliffe, Bobby Moynihan, Jaylin Hall, Corbin Bernsen and Megan Thee Stallion. It airs on Monday nights at 8:30 p.m. beginning Feb. 23.
“If you see me, that means I have a job I’m going to every day,” she said. “But if you don’t see me, I’m hustling like you do. I’m a high school graduate. Everything I do I had to learn on the job. Some people were kind enough to teach me. I read books. That’s the gig and that’s what I’m doing.”
Alexander was a staunch campaigner for Hillary Clinton.
“This is a really ugly time,” she said of the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. “They say you don’t get in life what you need. You get what you deserve. So, some way America must deserve this lunatic. I don’t like to believe it, because I don’t believe Black people ever deserve this. I believe white people do, because they have an abscess they don’t want to look at and he’s the personification of all that ugliness.”
She finds the notion that it would take a celebrity to knock off Trump as stupid.
“It wasn’t a celebrity that beat her it was a rich white man. He was their particular brand of Aryan superiority. So to say that Oprah Winfrey with her Black self suddenly would get the Michigan voters. You kidding? Suddenly the white women would line up because they like her book club? That’s absurd.”
“They didn’t like Hillary with all that she had done,” she added. “They made her look like the wicked witch of the west. They’d make Oprah a damn beast if she ran.”
Regarding the controversy surrounding Bill Cosby, Alexander felt that everyone must make their own determination.
“I know I am a person who speaks about women’s rights and for victims’ rights,” she said. “I can’t stand in that space and double talk, but it does get difficult when these are the people that you knew and grew up with and love. Public opinion is not justice but often that’s where we are judged. Everybody deserves their day in court. I also believe some things done in the dark do come to light. It is what it is.”
For more than 11 years, Bill Vaughan has kept Wave readers up to date with the latest news in entertainment. Now, we are collecting some of those past columns into what we call the Best of Tasty Clips. To contact Vaughan, visit his social media pages on Facebook and Instagram or @tasty_clips, on X @tastyclips, and on LinkedIn to William Vaughan.
