I grew up in the eighties when television came from a wooden box and there were but a handful of channels to choose from. Evening sitcoms were all the rage but searching for families that looked or sounded like mine was a hopeless task. I loved Family Ties, Webster, Growing Pains and The Cosby Show… but it was all very black and white.
I’m mixed race. My parents came to Australia from South Africa as political refugees in 1973, and I was born in ’79. I’m the youngest of three sisters and in Primary School my class mates constantly pointed out how different we looked. It was confusing and sometimes pretty hurtful. If only there had been a show that reflected the highs and lows, blocks and flows of growing up mixed. It’s no doubt that my experiences from the margins fuelled my ambition to become a Writer/Actor/Director and bring my multiplicity to the screen.
It’s no doubt that my experiences from the margins fuelled my ambition to become a Writer/Actor/Director and bring my multiplicity to the screen.
Fast-forward to 2019, it’s a gloriously sunny day in Los Angeles California and I’m headed to ABC-Disney studios for my first table-read of US sitcom Mixed-ish. I’m the recipient of the 2019 MentorLA (Comedy) program run by Australians in Film and Screen Australia. My assigned mentor is Peter Saji, the co-creator/ co-showrunner of Mixed-ish. The show is a spinoff of the hugely successful series Black-ish which focuses on the Johnston Family. Mixed-ish follows the back story of the mother, Rainbow Johnston (played by Tracey Ellis Ross) and essentially centres a mixed kid with a black mum and a white dad in 1980’s America. The show is good. The exploration of family, power, race, politics, cross cultural tension and 80’s fashion all wrapped in a sitcom formula hits me where I live. For the first time in my life I am the target demographic and just like cis-white dudes get all romantic about Stranger Things, Mixed-ish is my fish-outta-water jam.
I headed in chaperoned by Saji’s talented assistant Maya, the table-read takes place on set in the “School Cafeteria.” The cast, head writers and Executives all sit in the round on trestle tables up one end of the room, and the rest of us (assistants, script coordinators, Afro-Aussie blow ins) are seated down the other end in rows. The cast is very, very good; honed and skilled in the form. Gary Cole as grandpa and Mark-Paul Gosselaar (Saved by the Bell) as dad, pitch their performances of 80’s whiteness with great skill. FYI Gosselaar’s thighs in the tennis sequence from the Country Club episode need mention, they are jaw-droppingly hot. Tika Sumpter plays mum and Christina Anthony plays Aunt Denise. These queens are on point and Aunt Denise’s comedy is elevated by an extraordinary wardrobe and wig collection- shout out to the design team. Then there are the three children at the heart of the show, Rainbow is played by Arica Himmel, her little brother Johan by Ethan William Chidress and her little sister Santamonica by Mykal-Michelle Harris. Three mixed- race kids with natural mixed-race hair on prime time American TV, hell-yeah! These three handle the comedy like seasoned veterans and it’s clear the show has birthed a new generation of super-stars.
Behind the scenes of 'Mixed-ish'. Source: Supplied
Three mixed- race kids with natural mixed-race hair on prime time American TV, hell-yeah!
Tracey Ellis Ross entered the Cafeteria around a page in and I felt butterflies in my tummy. She is such an icon, beacon of self-care and black love that my mouth ran dry. I think if I’d taken a litmus test all my vital organs would have scored off the charts. Just like taking a walk in the sunshine can be more effective that medication, being in the presence of Ellis Ross, at a table read of a script written by Angela Nissel, and surrounded by so much black excellence was uplifting.
I never truly understood the phrase “You can’t be what you can’t see” by Marian Wright Edelmann until I walked onto the set of Mixed-ish. Don’t get me wrong I’ve used the term countless time, pondered it at length and I really thought I got it! Growing up mixed down under and then working in the mono-cultural spaces of Australian theatre and screen has normalised the feeling of being the odd one out. I’m used to the frustration of dealing with hair and makeup teams who’ve never worked with afro’s before, the anger of daily unconscious bias and of course the sadness of tokenism. I’m used to walls of white executives only allowing one person of colour in at a time. I’m used to feeling a little uptight. Just picture my whole-body fingertip-to-follicle joy when I walked onto a Hollywood set filled with fields of natural hair and braids as far as the eye could see; from production to makeup, wardrobe, to the writing room, the cast and even across the Executive offices.
To paraphrase the late Richard Pryor, “now I know how white people feel… relaxed.”
