Why this ‘feel-good’ film embraces the label – and you should, too

“It’s all right to talk, yell at the screen,” instructs director Tina Mabry before the world premiere of her film “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat” during the annual Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival. “That’s what movies are about. That’s what we are about,” added Mabry before the lights went down on this crowd of summer vacationers escaping the pressures of the C-suite and Congress.

Listen, she didn’t have to tell them twice. From its opening scene to its rolling credits, “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat” is the very definition of a feel-good movie (more on that later). Folks were guffawing, wiping away tears, sucking their teeth and clapping for the friendship triumvirate whose roller coaster ride from adolescence to their “wise women era” is chronicled in the film that will be released on Hulu on Aug. 23.

Based on the 2013 novel of the same name, Mabry’s film follows soul mates Odette (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), Clarice (Uzo Aduba) and Barbara Jean (Sanaa Lathan) as they navigate the ’60s, men, marriage, death and dreams deferred. The story is an homage to grown women that treats the over-40 set as a demographic worthy of the spotlight. The friends are regular women with regular problems – a cheating husband, a bottle of clear liquor, menopause. The movie, which everyone involved described as a “rare treat,” was written by Black women, directed by a Black woman and stars Black women who aren’t commemorated on postage stamps.

The plan was to sit down and ask the cast and director a litany of questions. But like the characters they play on-screen, when the Supremes get together it’s best to just stand back. The following conversation, which took place after the film’s premiere, digs into the lessons the women learned on set and why “heartwarming” isn’t a bad word; it has been edited for length and clarity.

Aunjanue, last night you said that “The Supremes” was one of the first opportunities you got to actually talk to other women in a scene. That shocked me.

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor: Well, I don’t want to speak for my cast mates here, but it really has been my experience that the majority of the things I do, I’m talking to men. I did something a couple years ago and me and the other woman who was one of the leads, we had to request that we actually had a conversation. I just think it speaks to how women aren’t valued as communal storytellers. So this is why this experience is special for me.

Sanaa Lathan: I haven’t had that experience. But I understand where she’s coming from because early in my career I was always like the romantic lead, the ingenue … it was a lot of working with men in a pre-#MeToo situation. There was definitely a hierarchy that I felt. And I had to go through a lot of … stuff, you know what I mean? So I always cherish when I’m able to work with women and tell women’s stories. Gina Prince-Bythewood (who directed and wrote 2000’s “Love & Basketball”), when I think about it, was the only Black woman that I really worked with on a film before this. In all of these years. It’s just crazy.

Uzo Aduba: I do come from a slightly different lens. Pretty much the whole of my career has been working with women. Whether we’re talking about “Orange” or “Mrs. America.”

Lathan: That was a lot of women.

Aduba: I love feel-good movies, let me start there. I’d never been in these type of stories that like, touch the heart, touch the spirit and is solely focused on our culture before.

Often “feel-good” is used as a pejorative in the industry. Why is that? And how do we define “feel-good?”

Tina Mabry: A feel-good movie is something that feeds your spirit. It builds you up. It doesn’t mean you don’t cry from time to time, but it will wipe your tears. We get very stuck into certain genres. But to me, in order for something to feel good, it must be authentic.

Everyone: Ummm-hmmm.

Mabry: For me, it’s a personal evolution to tell a story that really shows more joy. That’s lacking in this world in general.

Lathan: And in movies lately. It’s almost like feel-good movies are not considered. … They don’t get the accolades. It’s almost like it has to be dark to acknowledge that this is deep art.

Aduba: That’s what I was going to say. It’s the suggestion that heartwarming can’t have stakes. And I don’t know if I necessarily think that’s so. There are plenty of movies like this with well-respected, esteemed actors. Whether it’s a “Fried Green Tomatoes” or a “Steel Magnolias.”

Lathan: What do you call that genre? What kind of movie is that?

Aduba: I don’t know.

Lathan: That’s what I hate about these boxes. I think we were all talking about “The Bear” (which the Emmy has placed in the comedy category). People just want to label stuff. But it is what it is. Like, when I read the book, I was laughing and crying, and that’s life, right?

During the film I kept thinking of the concept of “weathering,” and how helping others can eventually hurt us physically. Aunjanue, your character, Odette, takes care of everyone but herself. Did you think about how that affected her health?

Ellis-Taylor: (pauses) Yeah.

Mabry: You did.

Ellis-Taylor: I don’t want to talk about it. We use all these terms, you know, like “burden” and “weight,” and that sounds pejorative. I see it as a privilege to be able to be an anchor. But you know it does take a toll. I’m just going to say that I hear you.

Lathan: Yes, it is a privilege. But what we need to learn is how to pour into ourselves as Black women. I mean, we know the history. I do believe that stress kills. It’s a fact.

Aduba: It makes me think of this expression “soft life.” Which also makes me think for some reason of Maya Angelou’s “On the Pulse of Morning” and the quote “our passages have been paid for.” Whatever you’re carrying, the generations upon generations upon generations on both sides of the water have paid for you to be here. You don’t have to keep paying.

Ellis-Taylor: I hear you. But when you have a community of people, not just a family of people, who are relying on you to eat and to get educated … How can I do both? To do the oxygen mask – I don’t know what that is.

Lathan: Well then we need to talk. I had to do it. I was having 10 panic attacks a day where I felt like I was going to die. In our community we pride ourselves on being so strong. You have such beautiful vulnerability. Your art is supreme – no pun intended – you have the benefit of channeling that through your characters.

Black female friendship is at the heart of “The Supremes.” Why do those types of friendships seem to hit differently, more deeply?

Aduba: We are already sludging through water and at points with a heavy foot. So, like, upon entrance to one another, I think the hope and expectation is one of aid and assistance. Like I’m here to help you in some way. I got you. I don’t use the terms “sis” because I have two sisters. But I do use “sister friends” very deliberately. Because there is that thing. I don’t know how to fully articulate it.

Lathan: It’s an essence. It’s a heart thing. We’ve been through so much, just historically. And yet we still open our hearts and have that joy.

Mabry: And I feel safe. I feel like I can be vulnerable without being judged, because there are certain intangibles that you understand that I don’t have to explain.

At one point in the film Odette says, “Without each other, maybe we would have believed what the world told us about ourselves.” What has the world tried to tell you about yourself and who told you different? Aunjanue, I see your eyes getting wide.

Ellis-Taylor: (laughing) Did you? Probably because I was hoping somebody else took it. Somebody answer first.

Lathan: We have to be twice as good. That’s like a mantra that we say, right? But I tell my mentees, you are worthy just because you are you. You’re worthy now. And you teach what you need to learn. I was born into a family where it’s like when you achieve, that’s when you get the love. But I’m good now, regardless of what I’m doing next.

Aduba: The world has tried to tell me that my beauty is ugly. That my strength is not attractive. Whether it’s my lips, my gap, my almond eyes, the shape of my head, my name. That my differences were going to be my disadvantage. My mother was a force instilling and ensuring in me that I am enough, exactly as I am. That I had to make absolutely zero adjustment and no negotiation of that for anyone.

Mabry: I grew up in Mississippi, in a very impoverished home, and was the first one to go to college in my immediate family. When you’re the only one, it’s much harder to find your voice because you don’t have any backup. Also because I did grow up in the South, I was told that my sexual orientation is an abomination. What that does to self-worth … I had an aunt who believed you love who you love. And how could love be a bad thing? And my father, who grew up in Jim Crow, believed the only way that you can fail is if you do not try. That is what has propelled me. I never felt like I’ve had the luxury to fail. And I for damn sure don’t have the luxury to quit. Not with this next generation coming behind us. I’ve got to make it better for them.

Aunjanue, do you want to bring it home?

Ellis-Taylor: You know you started off this conversation with this idea of feel-good being a pejorative. There are a few of those pejoratives: “feel-good,” “chick flick.” All those are generally associated with the artistic work of women. There is a societal undervaluing of what we do. There is a constant push to justify that our work matters. That we can take up space and we can be competent in those spaces. And you will thrive because we occupy those spaces. That’s why I get up in the morning.

You know, I’m also from Mississippi, and my hero is Fannie Lou Hamer. Sixty years ago, in 1964, she testified in front of the Democratic National Convention. She had people who looked like her telling her that she did not belong because she was a Black woman from the South. People like Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights stalwarts, were telling her this. So this is the path that I walk in. So I know that the devil is a lie. I’m here because I need to be here. There’s people at home that cannot be here because you’re keeping them outside of the door. So. Yeah.

Aduba: That’s beautiful.

Lathan: Why you always got to go to church? I’m, like, it’s a Q&A!