My father had a gift for putting an idea in your head and making you think you came up with it. Before I knew it, I was chucking up deuces to that comfortable life in Maryland and making plans to throw myself into the mix of the cutthroat entertainment industry. At the time, I was a twenty-six-year-old single mother—born and raised in the heart of Chocolate City with very little professional acting experience on my résumé, zero prospects for acting work, and very few leads that could get me in the room with the people who could get me auditions and jobs. In other words, to anyone even remotely familiar with Hollywood and its inner workings, I would have been tagged easily with the “least likely to succeed” stamp across my forehead. But none of that mattered to me or my father or most anyone else who loved and wanted more for me.
Within days of my father putting that bug in my ear, I was considering where I’d go to pursue my acting career. Today, with film productions opening up work for actors and crews in nontraditional film cities like New Orleans, Atlanta, Cleveland, Chicago, and the like, there are plenty of places an actress trying to lay down roots can go to find work and a decent living, but back when I was first getting started, there really were only two places for working actors: New York for the theater scene and Los Angeles for film and television. After some careful consideration, I nixed New York, because theater doesn’t pay, the rent is too damn high, and finding affordable child care would have been about as doable as catching a first-class flight to Pluto. Besides, I was checking for Cali because I was seeing fellow Bisons on television: at that time, Wendy Raquel Robinson, Paula Jai Parker, Anthony Anderson, Isaiah Washington, and Marlon Wayans were just a few of the Howard alums who were making a name for themselves on both the small and big screens, and all of us who’d graduated alongside and after them were watching and marveling at their success. So I decided. “You’re right, Dad. California it is.”
A few months later, I made it to California on a buddy pass I bought for one hundred dollars from a friend of mine who worked for an airline, with a mere seven hundred dollars to my name and baby Marcell on my hip. Though I was being managed by Linda Townsend back in Maryland, I did not have an agent. I did not have a place of my own. I did not have a car. I did not have a job. I did not have a SAG card, which would allow me to actually work as an actress. But I was the ultimate hustler, and by hook or crook, I was going to be a star.
Within days of landing at Los Angeles International Airport and dropping off my suitcases at Dee’s place, I hit the ground running, signing up with a temp agency and nailing down a job at an accounting firm. I promptly made myself completely indispensable so that I could make the argument for why they should make me semipermanent rather than send me back to the temp agency, which would have farmed me out all over the sprawling city at all hours of the day and night. I had a baby and needed stability—a steady job with steady hours at the same place each and every day so that I knew where I’d be, what time I could get back home to my child, and when I’d be able to audition. In addition to working my tail off and making myself indispensable, I played the single mom card to get what I needed from the office manager. That single mother card is real—you better understand and respect that. “Look,” I said, “I got a little baby and he needs his mother. I’m a hard worker, I promise you that, but for the sake of my baby, I need to have a schedule—some consistency. I can’t be sent to Woodland Hills one day and to Beverly Hills on another. I need to be stationed at this office with regular hours so I can get home to my son.”
The office manager cheerfully accepted my proposal.
“I came here to be an actress,” I said matter-of-factly as I grabbed a pen from her desk and leaned into the paperwork she’d asked me to sign. “I’m telling you this so that you know I’m going to need time to audition and work when I book gigs.”
She smirked when I said that. I’ll never forget that look—the curl of the lip, the narrowed side-eye, that huff of air that she pushed up from her gut and through her thin nostrils. I’d seen it before. It was that same dismissive “yeah, right” look I got from a few of my classmates when I declared I could both be a mother and graduate college on time. It was the look on those social workers’ faces when I told them I’d be on my feet soon enough. It was on the faces of a few folks, too, when I announced I was leaving everyone I loved and all that I knew to move to Hollywood in pursuit of an acting career. Though I was used to those smirks, they always rubbed me the wrong way, and I never forgot them. But rather than discourage me, they were like gallons of high-grade gasoline adding fuel to my fire. I have faith in God, and I know my purpose, so I have no need to be nasty about it when someone doubts me. I simply put my head down and work hard while I wait for the tides to turn in my favor; that’s when my actions and my blessings speak volumes. My office manager wasn’t a believer, but I’d gotten out of her exactly what I wanted—a steady paycheck at a job that afforded me steady hours.
When I collected my first check, I stacked it with the seven hundred dollars I’d brought with me to Los Angeles, and with the help of my cousin Dee, we started ticking off the list of things I needed to set up camp in Los Angeles. First up was buying myself a used car. Dee kicked in some cash and took me over to the airport, where they were holding car auctions, and helped me scoop up an old Nissan Sentra. That thing was gray and dingy with a front driver’s seat belt that tied over my lap, but I put Marcell’s old car seat in the back and I drove all over Hollywood in that bad boy, without a care in the world how it measured up to the more flashy cars in the ever-glamorous Tinseltown. I didn’t have one problem showing up for auditions in my Nissan, with Marcell’s car seat, littered with Cheerios, goldfish crackers, and toys, filling up the backseat, and parking between a Benz and a Porsche.
I hustled my way into an apartment, too. I didn’t dally while looking for this place, because my cousin’s show was about to wrap up and Dee was heading back to DC, so time was ticking. Plus, my credit was horrible, I wasn’t making much money—about ten dollars an hour at the accounting firm—and I needed to get in front of a property manager whom I could convince to rent to me, even though my TransUnion and Equifax reports were shining a harsh fluorescent light on the late credit card balances I was struggling to pay off while attending college and caring for a new baby. In other words, a bitch couldn’t really afford to be choosy. Almost as quickly as I started looking, I found a potential spot for Marcell and me, a cute little studio apartment in a green garden building surrounded by palm trees. “Oooh! This is so California!” I exclaimed when I saw it.
I put on the best performance of my life to get the property manager, a sweet little old black lady, to overlook all my financial issues and rent me that studio. My award-worthy persuasion involved tears. I cried real tears for that place. “I won’t be late on my rent,” I said, water welling in my eyes. “I’ll keep my place spotless, I won’t make any noise or have any wild parties, no strangers coming in and out of the property.” Then I went in for the kill, taking a breath and turning on the full waterworks. “Please, I just got here and I’m trying really hard to better my life. I need this place for me and my baby.”