is, but because she is exactly who she is. Because dark skin and Afrocentric features are not curses. We are beautiful. We are amazing and accomplished and smart.
Okay, smart is never a given with anyone, but we are here. And we don’t need black ladies in airports and white guys in parking lots grading us on a curve, thank you very much.
nine
MISTLETOE GIRL #2 TELLS ALL
Ask any actor, and they will tell you the teacher who had the biggest influence on them as they crafted their technique. You’ll hear names like Stanislavsky, Strasberg, Adler, Hagen, and, of course, my own teachers, Screech and Mr. Belding.
I made my screen debut with two lines as Mistletoe Girl #2 on Saved by the Bell: The New Class. And, yes, I was in awe of Dustin Diamond, aka Screech, and Dennis Haskins, aka Mr. Belding. All the other kids on set were as green as I was, but these two were veterans as the only holdovers from the original show. In this room, they were stars.
The show taped in front of a live studio audience, but during rehearsals the studio was empty. So any scene I wasn’t in, which was the majority of them, I would go take a seat in the audience instead of going to my dressing room. I didn’t just watch Dustin Diamond and Dennis Haskins act; I studied how they interacted with the director and how they treated the rest of the cast and the crew. Dustin had been doing comedy for years, so he had this slapstick ability that he would reserve and then tweak for scenes. I didn’t realize that was a skill set you had to actually work at. Also, he was older than the teenagers on the show, and I knew I was going to be older than the people I was working with as long as I kept getting cast as a high schooler. Do you keep your distance as the adult? How much do you joke around? I literally just didn’t know anything. And Dennis was all about dirty humor as soon as work was done, so I definitely learned that you could choose who you wanted to be on set.
I actually played two different black girls on the show, coming back later as Jennifer, a girl obsessed with collecting coins. She also inexplicably dressed like a 1950s housewife heading to a garden party, but then she went to the Sadie Hawkins dance in a hot red dress. I guess her closet had some serious range. I fortunately started my career off doing a lot of multicamera half-hour shows where I had the ability to sit in the audience and watch people work. One of my favorites to study was Sherman Hemsley on Goode Behavior, a house-arrest comedy. Yeah, a house-arrest sitcom. I tested to be a series regular as Sherman’s granddaughter, but I didn’t get the part. However, the producers brought me back to play her best friend. The whole time I was on set I was thinking, That’s George Jefferson! I sat in the audience, listening to the notes he was given and watching how he tweaked his performance to suit them. It was a master class in comedic timing. Now, it wasn’t my cup of tea, but he made it sound like it was. He had just the right rhythm to wait for the laugh and then zero in for the punch line.
My go-to acting technique was to smile a lot. The guy who played Juan Epstein on Welcome Back, Kotter, Robert Hegyes, was one of the assistant directors. He saw me watching every scene and took a seat next to me out in the audience.
“I have two pieces of advice for you,” he said.
I nodded and braced for the inevitable: “One, you’re creepy. Two, stop staring at the talent.”
“I can tell you’re basically waiting for your line,” he said. “It’s ‘Blah blah blah, now me.’”
He was right. Whenever I did a scene, I smiled a lot at the other actor to show I was listening, and almost nodded when it was about to be my turn, as if to say, “That’s my cue.”
“Always remember to listen to what the other actors are saying, and react. Just listen and react.”
“Got it,” I said. “Listen and react.” I really did get it. One thing about me, I don’t mind notes if they are helpful.
“The other thing to remember is this: you are always going to be able to find people who don’t