Many of those who see Da'Vine Joy Randolph today, this imposing black woman, tall and tall, with long hair and a usually serious expression, arrive on the red carpets of Los Angeles, where she wears architectural dresses, large sunglasses and … a halo of old Hollywood glamour, they keep wondering who he is. Who is she who has been taking the stage week after week for the past few months to collect awards one after the other? But that's because the trees of glamor sometimes make it impossible to see the forest of reality. If you try so often to remember what this face sounds like to you, it's precisely because you've seen it many times before. Because beyond the designer clothes and long eyelashes of these months, Randolph's career has been a long decade in the making. You've seen it many times in movies and television, some even in musicals. Unless a meteorite falls the next day, the 10th – and with the permission of Emily Blunt, America Ferrera, Jodie Foster and Danielle Brooks – she will win an Oscar. And there will be no excuse for not remembering his name.
Randolph's (Philadelphia, 37) career has been taking off in recent months thanks to her role as chef Mary Lamb in Those Who Remain. But it is exactly that, the last step of a long, stable path that has been built with care and dedication, based on good offers and very well thought-out decisions for almost 12 years. And she didn't even want to be an actress. She was very angry when she was forced to follow this path. Young Da'Vine studied to be an opera singer. Since childhood, she had a wonderful voice, especially for gospel, and for years she sang in the school choir in her town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, the same town where the chocolate factory of the same name was founded. In fact, his first steps at local art schools and Temple University were to pursue a degree in vocal performance; She saw herself as an R&B star and her mentors more as an opera singer. But after this first step to university, he received a scholarship to the prestigious Yale. She planned to attend the downtown conservatory, but was dropped from the program her first year due to an administrative error. Since he had a scholarship and wanted to graduate on time, his mother advised him to enroll in theater in the meantime. “I was literally crying, screaming and kicking in the administration: 'Please, I don't want to be an actress, my mother told me I have to do it,'” she recalled in an interview with Two Years Ago Essence magazine. “And that's how it all started. I am very grateful to my mother, but I have never wanted or desired any of it. Behave in a sense, yes, but never like that.”
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She made a virtue of necessity and used her stay at Yale in addition to a summer stay at Oxford University, where she discovered Shakespeare and fell in love with the theater. From there, like all the applicants, she went to New York. While she lived in a shared apartment and worked as a nanny, the days passed, money ran out, and desperation gripped her. He was about to head to Los Angeles to try his luck on the show's pilot season when he found out there was a vacancy in the Ghost musical. It was about the role of Oda Mae Brown, the 45-year-old psychic who played Whoopi Goldberg in the 1990 film. It was 2011, I was 25 years old and had nothing to lose. She wasn't even nervous about getting it and she got it. Even she didn't believe it. But fate played another trick on her: the actress who played Brown in the London musical had an accident and had to replace her. He had to learn the role and settle in the UK in just five days. He worked on it for two months. He returned to New York and began rehearsals just two days later. The musical grossed more than $13 million and she was nominated for a Tony for Best Supporting Actress for her first professional role.
From then on everything was similar. Step by step. It's not a newbie: almost fifty titles in a decade. She made her first series appearances in “The Good Wife”, “This Is Us”, “Selfie”, “Veep”, “Empire”, already with seven episodes … and then Eddie Murphy crossed her path. The comedy star had always entertained the idea of starring in a film about the godfather of rap, singer, actor and promoter of blaxplotation films with black actor Rudy Ray Moore, nicknamed Dolemite. He accomplished this in 2019, casting Da'Vine Joy Randolph as Lady Reed, his companion, in I Am Dolemite. That was a boom for her because then two people who changed her life saw her perform: Steve Martin and Alexander Payne.
Da'Vine Joy Randolph, arriving at the Spirit of Independent Film Awards held on February 25, 2024 in Santa Monica, California. NINA PROMMER (EFE)
Martin, creator and star of the series Only Murders in the Building, cast her as the jaded detective Donna Williams, who tries to stop (and sometimes help) Martin himself, Selena Gomez and Martin Short. Meanwhile, she continued to star in series (High Fidelity or The Idol, canceled after much controversy) and films (United States vs. Billie Holiday; The Lost City, for which she always praises her partner and protagonist Sandra Bullock) until her big one Appearance role: that of Mary Lamb in Those Who Remain. Payne has been thanked more than once for some of this season's awards. In those of the actors' union, he recognized their “trust and cooperation”: “You are the true dream of every actor.”
As she said in several interviews during this awards season — in which she has managed to find the difficult balance between being ubiquitous and not overwhelming the viewer or critic — Payne trusted her in her judgment and perfectionism during filming. For example, the director sent him a bunch of cigarettes before filming so he could learn to smoke. And she did it. When he explained to her that she had to wear curlers in a scene where she was cooking because it was Christmas and it was something intimate, she refused: “That's not who we are.” Payne argued that her mother had done it, but she refused: “As long as Mary is at this school, I will cook. I told him I would only put the curlers on alone in my room,” she said in an interview with Refinery29. “What I have to thank Alexander for is that he said, 'Okay, I hadn't thought of that, thanks.'” She insisted that I not be too tacky with the chef's clothing and keep her in uniform, because she be a strong, working woman from the 70s. He also asked him to take photos of his character cooking. “It was important to validate it,” he commented in W Magazine. “In his head he runs a Michelin-starred restaurant in the basement of a school,” he said. “The best thing was that we were able to have these conversations. There were no cancellations. And I applaud it because they didn't have to do it. “I have experienced many situations where that was definitely not the case.” She defines herself as a “strategist” in the roles she chooses, “especially as a black woman,” she says, making sure that they are full of nuances and do not remain on the surface. And fight for it with everyone in front of you.
Da'Vine Joy Randolph in her role as Those Who Remain. Miramax (ZUMAPRESS.com / Cordon Press)
This attention to detail in her Mary Lamb is what won her the honors in these awards. He always steps on the carpet seriously, as if it wasn't his place, and gradually, as he greets other colleagues or chats with them at the nominees' table, he begins to loosen up. She explained that the awards are something important for her, that she prepares the clothes and the entire look in advance and carefully, and that she is one of the few who does not pretend to act and improvise on stage. He always carries little cards with a few lines of what he wants to tell. Logical yes, but noticeable today. “I did it about an hour ago…” he commented to The Hollywood Reporter upon arriving at the Spirit Awards, which he also won on February 25th. “It's fresh in my heart and that's exactly what I want to say. “I just write it down to make sure I can adequately express my feelings, but it all comes from deep inside.”
Da'Vine Joy Randolph in the press room after winning the Actors Union Award for her role in “Those Who Remain” on February 24, 2024. Jordan Strauss (AP)
Regarding the Oscar, she explains that she doesn't expect anything, that she's just “happy to be invited into this room.” As you say, with a solid acting background at Yale, it would be absurd for him to choose projects just for the awards. “I have a great background; Humility, I have good taste,” he told reporters after Spirit. Which leads her to look for characters to explore and delve deeper into. After the BAFTAs (yes, she won them too), she explained that for her, filmmaking was “almost a mission, a form of activism.” “The idea of being on a screen and what that all means when you see me is very important. And that’s a win in itself.” In her opinion, this “gift from God” of action is her way of giving back to the community. “And now I’m grateful that a lot of people see it. So what does recognition mean? Thank you. “It makes me feel blessed.”
That's why he's not afraid of failure. The joys will come. He mockingly notes that when he makes a path, when he believes things will go one way, the opposite happens to him. He says he's made pilots that never came out, films that took years to release, and great projects that were canceled. “It doesn't come naturally, but you have to deal with rejection and loss. “I don't know if it's a good skill to develop, but you have to really like what you do because there are a lot of no's,” he said for the special Oscar issue of Vanity Fair, which he co-wrote on the cover Stars like Natalie Portman and Bradley. Cooper. Now that he's having his big moment, the best thing he can do is follow the advice once given to him by his partner Meryl Streep, even if it doesn't seem so easy: walk on your own Pace yourself and stay present. She tries, affirming that she hasn't even had time to process it, but that she's happy to be living it and having her loved ones by her side. To her best friend, who is also her publicist, and to her mother. In fact, up until a few days ago, I was asking for a few extra tickets to the Oscars, even if they were separate or in the back, or I had to pay for them, whatever. The family was angry with him for not inviting them. He already got it. And everything indicates that they will see her lifting it.