Vivica Fox: Originally I turned it down three times. And she named a list of folks who we might want to consider, and Morris was at the top of that list. He had to be her equal, and within the fabric of the story, it went back and forth. If it was a real sensitive guy from the very beginning and didn't have much confidence, then it wouldn't be much of a feat for Shanté to tackle. I wanted a guy that would be a man's man and strong.so that once Vivica breaks him down, he would've come from somewhere. Morris Chestnut was one of the best kissers, child! I'm like, damn, you like fine wine, baby! He takes care of himself, and I appreciate him for that. It was just amazing to watch him evolve, and then now to see him on Rosewood, he's getting even finer. He really was into video games, and then by the time we did Two Can Play That Game, he had got married, he was about to become a father, and he had really turned into this. When we first did the show, he had just come off of Boyz n the Hood, and he was still kinda young, still kinda green. Vivica Fox, Shanté Smith: did a sitcom years ago, called Out All Night with Patti LaBelle. Selling the film would come down to perfect casting: two charismatic leads the audience would root for without question. While the title changed, the central premise - how to get a man back in line - stayed the same. The film, originally written as a sequel to Brown’s previous picture, How to Be a Player, was previously titled How to Make Your Man Behave in 10 Days or Less. I got a mama, nine sisters, and a cat.” -Tony On Black Twitter, romantic dilemmas sound like lifts from Two Can Play That Game: “You find a thong in your man’s bed, you only wear Calvins tho, wyd?” Fifteen years later, it’s only fitting that the film lives on in a medium as ubiquitous as the game itself: memes.īuzzFeed News spoke to members of the cast and crew about how the film came to be, how it shifted black Hollywood, and whether or not the game is still the game. Issa Rae co-wrote and starred in her web series, The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl, and parlayed its success into Insecure, a TV series premiering next month on HBO. ShondaLand and its stable of wildly successful shows have taken over Thursday night network television Empire and Black-ish own Wednesday. The film’s stars have gone on to successful careers and collectively have picked up NAACP Image Awards, a Peabody Award, and an Oscar. In the 15 years since Two Can Play That Game was released, its stars have witnessed a sea change in Hollywood for actors of color. For writer-director Mark Brown - and small Sony studio Screen Gems - the film was a hit. The characters were affluent and attractive, the colors were bright, the mood was light, and the jokes were sharp. Each side had its gender-specific war cabinet: Shanté’s girls were played by Wendy Raquel Robinson, Mo’Nique, and Tamala Jones the Robin to Keith’s Batman was Anthony Anderson Gabrielle Union took on the role of everyone’s favorite ponytail-swinging man-eater, Conny. But as soon as the season breaks, they show their asses.” The man showing his ass was her boyfriend Keith (Morris Chestnut), and in the game of love, no one was going to back down. “Have you noticed around spring men start to act up a bit?” asks Shanté early on in the film, highlighting the weather-based fuckery of men. Two Can Play That Game, which was pitched as a "battle of the sexes” romp, finds Shanté, played by Vivica Fox, setting up a 10-day plan to get her boyfriend back after he's caught out with another woman. And while Love Jones and Love & Basketball, for example, are both beloved films that are frequently heralded as giants of the genre, neither is a romantic comedy in the strictest sense. The world it portrays - wealthy upper-middle-class life in which black people are the drivers of their own complicated narratives - was instrumental in normalizing so many of the images we see today: everything from romantic comedies like Think Like a Man and The Perfect Match to digital content like The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl and Black Twitter’s ever-revolving GIF highlight reel.īy 2001, there had been a gap in the market for a pure “black romantic comedy” - the last major one had been in 1992, when Eddie Murphy and Halle Berry walked into the sunset together in Boomerang. But the $13 million film has had an outsized impact on black popular culture and the representation of black life onscreen since its release. The film itself was a low-budget project, it was director Mark Brown’s debut feature, and it starred solid but hardly household name actors. On the surface, the 2001 romantic comedy may not even seem all that iconic. Two Can Play That Game was never supposed to become a Classic.
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