EXCLUSIVE | 'Godfather of Harlem' creator Chris Brancato says African American women were truly backbone of the community
'Godfather of Harlem' had a supporting cast who played pivotal roles throughout the series. Bumpy Johnson (Forest Whitaker) and the Italian crime family may have been the center of attention, but the gangster drama also sheds ample light on the woman characters making them crucial to the storyline. And according to series creator, Chris Brancato, this was a conscious call. The showrunner, in an exclusive interview with MEA WorldWide (MEAWW), delved into the woman characters on the series.
"Yes, it was," said Brancato, when asked about the move to have women characters play integral roles. "Because right at the very beginning, as we were trying to pitch the series to EPIX, we said, what we were recognizing in our research, of course, was that African American women were truly the backbone of the community on many, many different levels. These women were not paid their proper due for how they held together households and families and by extension the entire community. And so. We, right from the beginning, knew we had the opportunity to do a great character in terms of Bumpy Johnson's wife."
Ilfenesh Hadera essays Mayme Johnson, Bumpy's wife, and Brancato outlines that she was his partner on some level was definitely a consultant with him about his criminal operations. "We knew he had a great opportunity there. And then we also had this daughter Elise (Antoinette Crowe- Legacy), whom he had abandoned then, and she came back into his life. And we also knew that this woman's story was potentially going to be very, very effective," he said.
"There's very little known about the real Elise. Other than that, she existed and passed away about 15 years ago. So what we were able to do is take that character and make her a kind of bridge between Bumpy and Malcolm (Nigel Thatch), because of her entry into the Nation of Islam," added Brancato. The show saw Elise as a drug addict who eventually kicked the habit. Her fractured relationship with Bumpy was one of those intriguing storylines when it came to looking at his personal life.
"We thought that that was also a very interesting avenue that had never been really explored in a television show, which is how women in that community were becoming Muslims. So yes, there was a desire to really dig deep into these women's characters and to try to really showcase them and give them as much screen time as possible on a show. That's a gangster show. So you very often have very little room for women in a gangster show, but because at this period of time in Harlem, the women were involved in the criminal operations of their men, and so we felt it was important to show that," he added.
(To lend an easy-to-read experience for our readers, the original interview has been split into multiple stories. Stay with us as we update our site with more of Brancato's valuable insights on 'Godfather of Harlem')