In the first five minutes of “Being Mary Jane’s” season 3 premiere, the camera cuts to a big star, lying on a gurney in a hospital hallway. The scene opens in the aftermath of the violent collision that ended last season. Mary Jane Paul (Gabrielle Union), a cable news anchor, caused the crash, and the big star who plays the character she injured in the process is Loretta Devine.
I figured that meant that Devine’s character, Cece, would die by the end of the episode, but not before delivering a killer, tear-jerking monologue. I had grown too accustomed to Devine as a compelling, sweet and matronly onscreen presence — as she has been in films like “Waiting to Exhale,” “First Sunday” and “Madea’s Big Happy Family” — or a slightly meaner but ultimately misunderstood version of her compelling matriarch archetype — as she has been in films like “Kingdom Come” and “Jumping the Broom.”
But after her first scene in “Being Mary Jane,” in which she comforts and coos at Mary Jane even though Cece is the bedridden one, Devine abandons all saccharine pretense. Following her discharge from the hospital with relatively minor injuries, she dons a bowling shirt and adopts a brazen swagger. Devine’s trademark singsong lilt falls away and her voice drops a half-octave. She starts angling for a cold, hard payday, not only from Mary Jane’s news station employers but also from the anchor herself, who was intoxicated at the time of the car accident.
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This isn’t your warm-blanket, hot-cocoa Loretta Devine role. Devine’s extortionist-slash-street philosopher-slash-prosperity lay-preacher Cece is a revelation. While watching this week’s episode, writer Ta-Nehisi Coates tweeted with admiration: “Cece ice-cold.” Devine is equal parts charismatic and creepy, comforting and callous — and it’s all the more remarkable because it’s such a notable departure. While live-tweeting this season’s second episode, I noted Devine’s absence and said that I missed her; another live-tweeter replied that she was relieved to have a bit of distance from Cece: “I’m not used to [Devine] as an antagonist.”
This year, Devine isn’t the only venerable black actress appearing on television in a role that stands in contrast to her prior oeuvre. On “Scandal” last season, Marla Gibbs, best known for the roles of Florence on “The Jeffersons” and Mary on “227,” appeared as a once-closeted lesbian grieving the death of her life-long love. It’s a role Gibbs likely relished, as she expressed her preference for drama, despite sitcoms yielding her most high-profile roles, in an interview with The Post this year.
Cicely Tyson turned in a similarly bold performance as Annalise Keating’s (Viola Davis) mother on “How to Get Away With Murder” in its first season. Tyson is no stranger to nuanced, dramatic roles, but in the golden age of her career, many of her characters have been wise, grandmotherly and/or primly religious. As Ophelia, Tyson dispensed ribald humor and confessed to a murder while greasing Davis’s scalp, an act of intimacy that has been familiar to black families for centuries though rarely depicted on network television.
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In these three instances, roles that allowed these actresses to step a bit farther outside the lines of Hollywood typecasting existed because black women created or produced the shows in which they starred. Devine’s Cece is part of a universe Mara Brock Akil invented. Both Gibbs and Tyson are on shows Shonda Rhimes runs as part of the ABC drama block built entirely around her brand. The black women who helm these series seem to be paying their own opportunities forward in parts that let actresses dig into their characters’ family lives, cultural affiliations and upbringings. That’s resulting in layered, challenging portrayals not just for actors but also for the audiences who are contending with their favorite, familiar onscreen presences as vastly different types of people.
Devine’s arc in “Mary Jane” likely isn’t very long. The actress has other commitments, and her story seems on its way to a satisfying resolution. But every week until then, I’ll relish being able to watch her stretch different acting muscles, and hope that this trend of imaginative, daring roles for veteran black actresses continues.
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