'The Chi' Season 5 on Showtime: How Howard graduate Birgundi Baker became an actress
Audiences have loved Showtime’s critically acclaimed series ‘The Chi’ right from its first season in 2018. Today the series has become a cult fan favorite with an increasing fanbase globally. The drama series has also garnered critical acclaim for its mindblowing representation of Black people who live in the Southern side of California with an emphasis on their daily struggles.
Emmy award-winning director Lena Waithe has beautifully portrayed the struggles that all the main characters go through. All the main characters constantly had a roller-coaster ride of a journey because of which they all have evolved in the past four seasons.
In the current season there’s a focus on Black love and how the relationship arcs keep on changing constantly. ‘The Chi’ Season 5 made its comeback on screens on June 26.
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In an interview with Rose and Ivy Journal dated July 2020, Birgundi Baker opened up on how she was originally a Howard University graduate who majored in dance before becoming an actor. She said, “First, I majored in dance because I was scared to major in musical theater since I was a really good dancer. I enjoyed acting the most but I felt like I need the most help with my voice. It was all over the place. I really wanted to get in and to not take the chance of auditioning for musical theater and not making it. I am not as good of a singer as I am a dancer. I was afraid and I took the easy way out and majored in dance and I was miserable. I would go to the musical theater shows and I would cry not because they were good (laughs) but because I wanted to be up there. I was only using one-third of what I loved to do and so I quit dance and I had to do an extra year because I switched, but it was the best decision. I feel like that extra year made me better than I would have been if I would have started out in it.”
Birgundi said she knew about wanting to make a career as an actor right in her childhood. “I always knew I wanted to be an actress and that I wanted to do something in the arts at a very young age because I grew up in a big family and everyone was in the arts, so I was around it all the time. My aunt went Juilliard so my mom sent me up to New York to watch the student shows and the plays. I just fell in love with it. She put me in dance and that kind of attracted me to the whole theater world,” she added.
Sharing about her first ever dance performance on the stage before becoming an actor, Birgundi said, “I was in a dance performance and I was a Purple People Eater, I wore a bright shiny purple costume with one horn and an eye on the side of it. I just remember being in the front and all of the kids were watching me do the dance moves. I remember feeling like, I have this, I can do this. Then you move on to different levels in dance classes. My mom put me in chorus and acting lessons and I entered a contest with Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and I won and I was on the front of box. I was eight years old. I had to fly to Florida to shoot all of the advertising and I got my first taste of being a working actor, being on the clock, rehearsing and being in front of the camera, I knew that was what I wanted to do.”
Birgundi, who started her career as an actor in the industry with shows like ‘Empire’ and ‘Black Lightning’, added, “What tested my patience was getting an agent, I sent out my headshot, resume and I had reached out to people who I knew had agents but it was so hard to get representation. I did a showcase and there were agents there and I got an agent from that showcase. Once I got an agent it just went from there. My first audition was Empire and I got that, then I got Chicago PD and Chicago Med. I think it had to do with Chicago at the time, there were all of these shows and Chicago is actually a very welcoming place for new artists. They have shows where they have their lead characters locked in but then they need all of these guest stars, so there are a lot of roles and small opportunities for actors. The first big thing for me was Heathers, because I was living in Chicago and it was filming in LA so I got to fly out, which was big thing. It had a musical rendition in it, so it was the first time I was able to use my musical theater background on TV."
Birgundi essays the character of Keisha Williams in ‘The Chi’ Season 5. We’ve seen how Keisha evolves from being a teen track star to going into an emotionally taxing relationship with Emmett (Jacob Latimore), her first boyfriend with whom she experiences love and heartbreak, both followed by their on and off relationship that kept on evolving in the past four seasons.
In this season though, we’d be seeing Keisha’s efforts to not reconcile with Emmett since she knows there’s going to be only heartbreak and pain; and Emmett’s earnest efforts to convince her again to give him a chance is not going to be easy because of Keisha’s friendship with Tiff and she is also a mother as well.