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https://blackgirlnerds.com/new-dog-grooming-show-and-series-based-on-erin-brokovich-at-abcs-tca-unveiling/

ABC’s presentation at Winter TCA will kick off with a panel celebrating man’s best friend featuring the host, judges and executive producers of “Pooch Perfect.” Hosted by award-winning actress Rebel Wilson, “Pooch Perfect” is a dog grooming competition series. The eight-episode series will showcase 10 of the best dog groomers in the country, along with their assistants, competing in a series of paw-some themed challenges. 

Each week on Pooch Perfect, teams will compete in the Immunity Puppertunity challenge, where one team will earn immunity from elimination. Then, in the Ultimutt Challenge showdown, the remaining teams will face off in an epic grooming transformation, which they will show off on the illustrious dogwalk. The trio of all-star celebrity judges – Lisa Vanderpump, Jorge Bendersky and Dr. Callie Harris – will be tasked with voting on the incredible creations and ultimately force one team back to the doghouse every week. It all leads up to the season finale where the top three teams compete for a giant cash prize and the coveted “Pooch Perfect” first place trophy.

“Pooch Perfect” is produced by Beyond Media Rights Limited. Elan Gale, Sonya Wilkes and Rebel Wilson serve as executive producers. Nicole Anthony, Mike Rosen, Carley Simpson and Matthew Silverberg serve as co-executive producers. ABC’s “Pooch Perfect” is based off of the Australian format.

Follow Pooch Perfect (#PoochPerfect) on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

ABC’s presentation at Winter TCA will continue with a panel featuring the cast and creative team behind new drama Rebel, which joins the Thursday lineup starting April 8. Inspired by the life of Erin Brockovich today, Annie “Rebel” Bello is a blue-collar legal advocate without a law degree. She’s a funny, messy, brilliant and fearless woman who cares desperately about the causes she fights for and the people she loves. When Rebel applies herself to a fight she believes in, she will win at almost any cost. 

Rebel stars Katey Sagal as Annie “Rebel” Bello, John Corbett as Grady Bello, James Lesure as Benji, Lex Scott Davis as Cassidy, Tamala Jones as Lana, Ariela Barer as Ziggy, Kevin Zegers as Nate, Sam Palladio as Luke and Andy Garcia as Cruz.

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Krista Vernoff (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Station 19”) is creator and showrunner of “Rebel.”  The series is executive produced by Vernoff and Alexandre Schmitt of Trip the Light; Erin Brockovich, John Davis and John Fox of Davis Entertainment; Andrew Stearn, Marc Webb and Adam Arkin. The series is produced by ABC Signature in association with Sony Pictures Television. ABC Signature, alongside 20th Television, is a part of Disney Television Studios.

Follow Rebel (#Rebel) on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. 

ABC announced today that Abigail Spencer (Hulu’s Reprisal, NBC’s Timeless) is set for a recurring role in Rebel as Misha, a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon who has a painful romantic history with Nate (Keven Zegers) but can’t resist getting involved with studying the Stonemore heart valve for fear that she may have inadvertently harmed hundreds of patients. Spencer joins previously announced recurring stars Mary McDonnell, Dan Bucatinsky, Adam Arkin, MoMcRae and Daniella Garcia, among others.

Rebel marks Spencer’s sixth project with Krista Vernoff, celebrating a creative partnership spanning 15 years.

Spencer recently launched her pandemic-pivot florist company County Line Florals: a longtime dream in loving memory of her late, champion surfing father, Yancy Spencer III.

Spencer is repped by UTA and Untitled Entertainment. 

https://blacknerdproblems.com/future-state-superman-house-of-el-1-review-a-gang-of-kryptonians/

Writer: Phillip K. Johnson / Artist: Scott Godlewski / DC Comics

Future State: Superman: House of El follows a family of Kryptonians centuries in the future who have banned together to save Earth from destruction. 

The concept of this book is pretty dope. The House of El are descendants of Clark Kent on Earth. Like way into the future. So while they are still enhanced by the yellow sun, their powers are diluted from generation after generation of mating with humans. 

But they still got those hands. 

The conflict of this story is rooted in a villain named the Red King who has enlisted a gang of parademons and Doomsdays to obliterate Earth. 

The best parts of the story were, as always, the character moments. All driven by the Superman mythos, this group tries to live up to a legend that’s bigger than any one Super person. 

From a purely aesthetic standpoint, I really enjoyed the different types of Super People we got in this book. There’s a 90’s looking ponytail, flannel wearing Superman, a half-Tamaranean gladiator Super Woman, a Super Zaddy, and my favorite, the Black twins Ronan and Rowan. 

Ronan is the main Superman of this future Earth, and his twin sister Rowan is a Blue Lantern with an S on her chest. 

Give! Me! More! Of! Them! Now!

Even though this was a 44-page issue, it goes by like a breeze. Johnson does a good job trying to flesh out these characters given the limited space. But I need some more of them. Particularly those twins. 

On top of that, an aspect I really liked was how these characters were so far removed from our Superman’s legacy that they aren’t even so sure that he was real. They wear the S on their chest but all they have to pull for motivation are stories which to them could just be fables. They have no real connection to their past, yet they still choose to fight for their people. That’s kinda profound, and I’m tearing up a bit. 

Future State: Superman: House of El #1 introduces some new characters in the Kryptonian family that will make you want to pick up all Superman-related books to see where they might pop up next. 

9 Super-Twins out of 10

Reading Future State? Find BNP’s other reviews here.

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The post ‘Future State: Superman: House of El #1’ Review: A Gang of Kryptonians appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.

https://www.essence.com/articles/boss-moves-inside-issa-raes-hollywood-empire/

Getty By Brittney Oliver ·February 23, 2021February 23, 2021

The multitalented creator has opened new doors and paved her own pathway to Hollywood. Issa Rae proved that you don’t have to let the status quo prevent you from creating… let the industry catch up. Here are the receipts on how Rae’s will and imagination push the envelope in the ways Black women can create, own and expand without boundaries:

Creating Longevity in Hollywood

For Rae, being a Black creative in Hollywood is a dream come true, that’s why she is planting her roots deeper to ensure longevity for the work she does. Recently launched Hoorae Media that will consolidate all of her ventures from film, television, music, management and more. The consolidation of her ventures is just one of the ways she’s setting roots. Her production company went from working out of a WeWork space to a two-story office space in Inglewood.

Entertainment Mogul + Businesswoman @IssaRae is a big stepper across industries! We've pulled the receipts on her boss moves in culture, business, and more. Tap in for the total. #ESSENCE pic.twitter.com/HbcHYvD8xt

— ESSENCE (@Essence) February 22, 2021

Crowdfunding Queen

The producer, director and actress has had success using her social influence to raise money for her projects. For her web series, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, she created a Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $56,000 to finish the first season. Pharrell Williams contributed to her Kickstarter for the 2nd season. The actor uses her social influence to get projects off the ground and fundraise for causes she believes in. In 2016, she created a GoFundMe page to raise money for Alton Sterling‘s children. In nine hours, the page raised $200,000. The crowdfund raised a total of $714,609.

Pays It Forward for the Next Generation of Creators

The Emmy-nominated producer and actress shares her wealth of knowledge about entering the TV industry with a 14-video virtual course on MasterClass. Besides sharing her lessons learned, Rae is a partner for the new digital platform for Black creatives, Blacktag, and will create original content for the platform. She’s also making sure Black creatives get paid for their viral content and the data they’ve generated by investing a minority-stake in Streamlytic’s Clture, which is a consumer-facing app helping minority consumers own and monetize their data.

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Investing Back into Her Community

The Inglewood native is invested in supporting and building in the neighborhood that raised her. She is intentional with filming episodes of HBO’s Insecure in the area, which shows love to local businesses and attractions. One of those investments is Hilltop Coffee + Kitchen. As a co-owner, Rae envisions the cafe as a hub for creativity and collaboration as she spent a lot of her time writing in coffee shops and wishing there were more Black-owned spots she could patronize in her neighborhood.

Expanding Her Brand Beyond TV & Film

This multi-hyphenated boss is looking to do more thanaria-label="Raedio (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.essence.com/entertainment/teamarrr-issa-rae-insecure-soundtrack/" target="_blank">Raedio. The artists she signs own their masters, and she uses her show to promote and create visibility for her artists.

TOPICS:  black history month Issa Rae

The post Boss Moves: Inside Issa Rae’s Hollywood Empire appeared first on Essence.

https://blackgirlnerds.com/interview-with-michelle-duster-ida-b-wellss-great-granddaughter-and-author-of-ida-b-the-queen/

Written By: Jeanine T. Abraham

BGN was honored to meet on Zoom with Michelle Duster, author of the new biography, Ida B. The Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells to talk about the relevance of her great-grandmother’s work today.

Tell me about your process for writing the book. 

I’ve been working on projects and other writings about Ida for several decades. So basically I committed about 30 years of research in different ways that I’ve collected in order to write this book. I read through almost all of the biographies that are already published to see what information is most common and dug deeper into aspects of her life that weren’t mentioned so much. I wanted to write from a slightly different angle than what already exists. 

What intrigued you the most when you were researching your ancestor’s story?

Well, how she was investigated by the FBI. That was just my personal fascination, so I thought I would start the book that way. I thought it would be dramatic. Somebody’s knocking at the door demanding to know who this Black woman is and threatening her with treason. I thought the FBI investigation encapsulated her personality. She refused to be intimidated at all by the FBI.

Another key story that stayed with me was her lawsuit against The Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad Company in 1884. Why did you pick this specific story to be in the book?

It was one of the major turning points in Ida’s life. Most people have moments that shape their idea of the world and make an impact on career path and passion. I think perhaps without that incident on the train, her life may have gone another direction. But because she had that incident, she was so humiliated and angry that she decided to actually speak up for herself and take on this massive railroad company because she thought it was an absolute open and shut case. I actually read the entire court transcript. Reading the actual testimony from witnesses who were present was fascinating; they describe everything. It was very clear that the train cars were separate and unequal. There was no doubt about it. 

Ida won her case, but it was overturned when appealed in the Tennessee Supreme Court. Ida even mentions in her autobiography that the courts couldn’t allow her case to win because that would have set precedent for people to sue the railroad company and ultimately win. They just couldn’t have that. So, it was just a bogus overturn on the part of the Tennessee Supreme Court. We see similar cases happen today. Like this most recent impeachment trial. You know, the evidence is absolutely overwhelming, you cannot dispute what happened, but then they try to come up with these ways to justify not convicting, where laws do not apply to them. It’s like this David and Goliath kind of dynamic where Goliath just crushes David. 

I’m sure my great-grandmother knew she was fighting this huge battle, but the fact that she decided to do it anyway and she won at first shows that she was right that she could get justice. Two and a half years later it was overturned, so that really did make an impact on her life as far as thinking that there really was no way to get justice through the legal system.

But legal challenges didn’t stop your great-grandmother. How did the lynching of her friends Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry Stewart, the owners of the People’s Grocery Company in Memphis, Tennessee, impact her life’s mission?

Those vicious murders changed the entire trajectory of her life. The day Ida’s friends were lynched, she wasn’t even in town. She was in Vicksburg, Mississippi, selling subscriptions for her newspaper. She made it clear that she loved working as a journalist for the newspaper and was excited about growing her business. She would go to meetings, give her pitch, and leave with handfuls of subscriptions. Her talent for writing and tenacity had grown the newspaper, and she had taken on partial ownership. You could guess that if she hadn’t experienced that specific tragedy in her life, she might have just continued growing the newspaper and being more in the business world. But when she learned about what happened with her friends, she decided to use her voice in the newspaper to expose the level of violence that was being inflicted on the Black community. At the time, it was extremely rare for lynching to take place in a major city. That made it unusual and extra horrifying. There are multiple layers that opened Ida’s eyes and made her realize that there is no justice. There is no way that Black people can ever get equal treatment in this country. So it made her think about advocating for using financial power within the Black community to stand up for ourselves and at least make our presence known.

We aren’t taught to even think of “collective action” among Black people with resources during this time period. 

Exactly. Ida was one of the co-founders of the NAACP, and the first Black millionaire Madame CJ Walker was also philanthropist who helped fund some of the NAACP’s anti-lynching initiatives thanks to Ida’s ant-lynching activism. 

The nuances you reveal about Ida, the facts that she loved fashion, was an entrepreneur, and courageously spoke truth to power, humanize her. What inspiration do you hope Black women will receive from this biography?

My great-grandmother’s lifespan was from the Civil War to the Great Depression, which was a time of enormous change in our country. And she was right front and center of all of the struggles to advance from enslavement, to women having the right to vote, to Black people as citizens. Really, the fight is for full citizenship. To be full 100% first-class citizens instead of “accepted” second-class citizenship. 

So my goal and hope is that particularly young Black women will see that their voices are important. They deserve the best and need to fight for full citizenship using several strategies. Speak up using journalism. Use your collective financial power when it comes to boycotts and implementing outside pressure to make a difference on systems. I hope that Black women will see the 400-year continuum of Black resistance against backlash as well as progress. We’ve been fighting since we’ve been here. We’ve never been passive about being oppressed.

I include modern activists in the book to show that what we are doing is a continuation. We are all in this together, and the past is connected to the future. It’s not ancient history. Our ancestors were doing what we are doing, now just in a slightly different way.

Ida B. The Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells by Michelle Duster. Published by Simon & Schuster. Please go to www.indie bound.org or bookshop.org to find a Black-owned bookstore near you.