But when I got the script for the table read, my character, Isis, was a combination of Foxy Brown and eight other blaxploitation characters squeezed into a skintight cheerleader uniform. There were all these made-up slang words. Now, I am not the most Ebonically gifted person, but I recognize a made-up word when I see it.
The initial script had one word in particular, or, I should say, a collection of letters, that I just tripped over as I was reading it in my living room. I couldn’t figure out what it said, so I showed it to my husband at the time. Chris peered at it like a word problem and then recoiled.
“Oh, God,” he said.
“What?” I said. “What does it say?”
“I think they transcribed a Martin episode.”
Martin Lawrence used to have these comic exclamations of disbelief as a realization dawned on him. It’s an improv riff that he mastered, but they had tried to spell it out. The full line was “Ossaywhattawhattawhat? Me-ow. Me gonna ow you. My nails are long, sharp, and ready to slash.”
Clearly they were going for an Oscar. I love campy humor as much as the next person, but I didn’t want to be picketed by the NAACP. The original script had Isis and Kirsten Dunst’s character, Torrance, ending up cheering together at UC Berkeley. If you know what it takes to get into the UC system, you know Isis is not an ignorant fool. She’s a leader, she’s a great student, she’s taking AP classes, and she’s got high SAT scores. I wanted Isis to be presented as a tough leader who was not going to let these girls steal from her without some cheer justice for the act of cultural appropriation.
The director, Peyton Reed, was on board, and every morning we would meet in my trailer to rewrite dialogue to make it more believable. I could not, however, make my cheerleading skills seem at all believable. The actresses on the white squad, the Toros, had started filming earlier and had about three weeks of cheerleading camp to boot. Our squad, the Clovers, had nine days to learn the same number of routines. The Clovers consisted of three members of the girl group Blaque, several college cheerleaders, and me. Of course the pros and the girls from Blaque got it quickly, but me? I am not by any stretch a dancer, or someone who picks up eight counts quickly. So pretty much every day I would come into cheerleading camp smelling of Icy Hot, like somebody’s old uncle.
Hi-Hat was our choreographer, and the poor thing knew I was hopeless. She just looked at me like, “Well, just do your best.” I know she was thinking, This bitch is never gonna get it.
So they did a lot of close-ups of me during the routines. Wide shots were out because I don’t match anybody.
One day I finally broke Hi-Hat. She threw up her hands.
“Do what you’re gonna do,” she said. “Just commit to it so it will look good.”
Kirsten had a house with her mom out in La Jolla during that shoot, but the rest of the cast was staying in a San Diego hotel, going to all the bars and clubs around town. Everyone was horny, and there were a lot of marriages that didn’t make it to the end of production. Normally I would be right in there for the fun, but I kind of felt like the cruise director. I was older and knew the area. There were a lot of people who weren’t quite twenty-one yet and I couldn’t get a million fake IDs. So the only place I could take them was Tijuana.
“How do you know TJ so well?” one cheerleader asked me, five tequilas in.
“I was on travel soccer in high school,” I said. It’s true. My soccer team was made up of the biggest female hellions in California. One time we walked across the border the night of an away game. We returned with one tattoo and six marines.
Kirsten was still in high school, and compared to me then she was so young. She was super nice and we would go out of our way to include her whenever we could. Her mom hosted barbecues, and we would all go because we wanted Kirsten to feel like part of the gang. You went, you ate, and you turned to the person next to you. “What bar are we going to?”
The movie came out and surprised everyone. We made ninety million dollars, and it’s become a cult classic. Soccer dads will come up to me and start doing the cheers, the “Brrr, It’s Cold in Here” routine, then ask me if they’re doing it right. I have to answer, “Dude, I have no idea. Sorry.”
I worked hard to make Isis a real character. It is interesting to me that when people reenact my scenes, they turn me back into that “Me-ow” caricature the director and I consciously took steps to avoid. They snap their fingers and say, “It’s already been broughten.”
That line is actually from a later spoof of teen movies, but perception is reality. Isis was an educated leader who refused to have her cheers stolen, but these people genuinely believe she was the villain.
A bunch of us did a cast reunion and photo shoot for a magazine a couple of years back. Kirsten was there and I mentioned how people say the “It’s already been broughten” line at me even though it wasn’t in the scene she and I played.
“It wasn’t?” she said, laughing. “I thought it was.”
Perception is reality.
SOMETIMES IT’S THE DIRECTOR’S PERCEPTION OF YOU THAT CAN RUIN A PROJECT. I get asked about Friends a lot because people know there were only two black people on the show who didn’t play something like a waiter or Chandler’s coworker. That leaves Aisha Tyler and me. For some reason, people get our plotlines confused. Aisha played the woman pursued by Joey and Ross. I played the woman pursued by Joey and Ross. Okay, I get it now.
When I was on, it was their seventh season, when Friends started to have more stunt guest stars. Susan Sarandon, Kristin Davis, Winona Ryder, Gary Oldman, and me.
I heard I got the gig on a Tuesday, the morning after my CBS hospital drama City of Angels was canceled. The best part of that show, by the way, was working with Blair Underwood—the sixth grader in me was dying. The worst part was having to yell “Pump in epinephrine!” and screwing it up each time. (You try it.) I had heard CBS gave great Christmas gifts, so my goal was to try to hang on until Christmas. We didn’t make it.
When I drove onto the Warner Bros. lot I was not scheming to become best friends with the Friends. I was so okay with that. By then I had done 1,001 guest roles and I understood how these shows worked. If you’re a regular, especially megastars grinding through your seventh season, you have so much on your plate that going out of your way to befriend your guest star is the last thing on the priority list.
But they were all really nice and totally professional. I thought, Okay, this could be cool. They had it down to a science and needed only three or four days to bang out an episode. My first scene was on the street outside Central Perk, with me unloading the back of a car, announcing that I am moving into the neighborhood. (Briefly, apparently.) The director was a regular, he did a lot of episodes. He went over the scene with David Schwimmer, Matt Perry, and the extras. Then he turned to me, and his tone completely changed.
“Do you know what a mark is?” he said in a singsong voice. “You stay on that so the camera can see you.”
It was like he was talking to a toddler. He assumed on sight that I didn’t know a single thing.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I know.”
Of course I knew what a mark was. Did he talk to other guest stars like this? The same thing happened in my next scene, this one with Matt LeBlanc.