If you were around in the late 90’s going into the 2000’s then you were lucky to experience one of the best Black film eras ranging from 1998-2005. During that time actresses and actors like Morris Chestnut, Sanaa Lathan, Nia Long and Taye Diggs just to name a few dominated that era on the movie screen. Which they all were also in the classic film The Best Man. So it was only right that these actors and actresses come back together for another classic, but this time to the tv screen with their new limited series The Best Man: The Last Chapter on Peacock. “Speaking to the Best Man, I really feel like Malcom just wrote characters that Black people and just people that can really relate to, they were progressive but had real problems. You got to see full human beings, you got to laugh, you know we love to laugh. We got to cry and be emotional” Regina Hall shared while talking about how The Best Man became a classic. “Anybody that watches these films, our films in particular, can relate to one of the characters. They can relate to one of the characters by seeing themselves or someone very close to them in these characters. That’s why I think they’re so invested in the story lines” Morris Chestnut shared. Hall also jokingly talks about Chestnut’s looks, “This one here is good looking which was going to keep the eyes on the screen.”
“I believe it’s necessary to get very talented artists involved because it’s not just talented actors, talented writers, but the director has to be talented. He has to be able to navigate to tell these stories because he is going to be told he has to tell it in a certain form for it to be acceptable because this is the formula they have put out and they have data to support this formula. We stepped out and said we are going to tell this story about the people we know and who we believe live inside ourselves. The younger audience that watches these characters see you could be a stripper one day and then the next day inside the oval office Influencing policies” Terrance Howard shared when discussing how certain elements a film needs to have to make a classic.
The Best Man is and will always be a classic movie within the Black community, if you are a millennial or older and haven’t seen this classic your Black card should definitely be revoked. When The Best Man came out in 1999 it gave us relatable realness from Jordan that’s played by Nia Long being that strong Black independent career driven woman, Lance who is played by Chestnut being an athlete star but battling infidelity, Quentin whose played by Terrance Howard being a young Black male trying to figure out his life and more. Long’s character was one of the most relatable women on The Best Man franchise, she displayed what most Black independent women deal with when it comes to being career driven and not knowing how to balance it with your personal life and love life. “ I think you have to keep your heart soft. I was having this conversation the other day with a girlfriend of mine. Sometimes I’m tired of being strong. It feels like we don’t have a choice if we want to find success, to be strong or be vulnerable. There are days I don’t want to be strong and I just want to have a normal experience, I want to have a happy experience. I want to be seen, I want to be heard and I want to be respected. Sometimes life doesn’t give us that, most times it doesn’t give us that. What I found to be very comforting for myself is to decide when I want to be strong and decide when I want to be a girl, a woman, a mother through all of it though keep your heart soft. Because if your heart is soft you won’t walk around carrying anger and disappointment. I always feel as a Black woman I have to do it one hundred times better and when I speak up for myself I’m being ridiculed and attacked. I just don’t do the dance well. I’m a straight shooter, respectable, loving and kind. I’m not entitled, I’m just truthful and some people can’t handle that” Long shared.
During that era, the majority of those Black movies that starred the main cast from The Best Man became classics and can still be watched till this day over 20 years later. The fact that this iconic movie will now be a limited series 20 years later on Peacock this month for the culture is unbelievable and iconic.
The Best Man: The Final Chapters limited series coming out this month furthermore shows how much of a classic and special film this was to their fans and our culture. “ I think we put down eight episodes of engaging television that are emblematic of the first two movies. So I will feel very satisfied” creator Malcolm D. Lee shares.
Yes, a lot of Black films have come out since that era, but not that many classics if we’re being honest. When asking the creator and EP what are the key elements of making a classic film, “Engaging characters that people want to see and can relate to, that’s number one. Tone is also very important to me, grounding the tone and the reality, but also knowing you are going to have humor and emotion. It all has to feel very very real and I think the third thing would be humor. I like humor, I think life can be very very funny and it’s not all one way” Lee shares.
Let’s just say this limited series has all of those things plus more. The character development was very on brand and precise. The acting was great with even more decades of experience. The series even includes something for the new generation when it comes to gender identification and building a relationship with your parents. Because when this movie came out in 1998 we didn’t know or discuss any other gender identifications besides boy or girl. So to see that play out in this series, was definitely a new and surprising concept to see especially within a Black family. This series will relate to a little of each generation from divorce, co-parenting, gender identity, coming out the closet, sexual assault and more. “We have some new characters I think that generation Z can definitely relate to with all the kids we have,” Chestnut added.
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