Debbie Allen received the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards on September 19th. She made an entrance in a glorious, glittering red sequin gown, looking drop-dead gorgeous.
Debbie Allen is an actor, director, producer, singer-songwriter, dancer and choreographer. She’s done it all – television, film, Broadway. She has earned three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe, five NAACP Image Awards, an Astaire Award for Best Dancer, an Olivier Award, a Drama Desk, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her credits include A Different World, The Cosby Show, Fame, Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square, Everybody Hates Chris, Girlfriends, Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, Empire, Grey’s Anatomy and countless others. I remember the first time I met her.
Susan Fales-Hill had come to talk to me about writing for A Different World, the number two television show in the country in its third season (The number one show, which A Different World had spun off from, was The Cosby Show.) I fell in love with Susan, the quintessential New Yorker, who had worked on The Cosby Show before heading west to work on the spin-off. Susan talked about the writing staff headed by the great Margie Peters (who won an NAACP Image Award for her episode “No Means No”). There were wonderful writers including Thad Mumford, Cheryl Gard and Yvette Lee Bowser… so I told Susan I was in. A Different World would be my first staff job.
I had written a pilot for the Ogiens/Kane Company for their development exec, Sharon Hall- that was it. So, I asked Joanne Curley-Kerner, the producer of the show, to send me to Atlanta, so I could do research on the cluster of colleges and universities upon which the fictional Hillman College was based, including Morehouse College, Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University.
Joanne agreed to send me before my arrival in Los Angeles. My previous trips to LA from NYC had been set up by production companies who wanted me to write pilots, including Ogiens/Kane. This time, I would be there to staff a season of the show- something I had never done.
This is the backdrop of the story of meeting Debbie Allen- but it’s also important to share how these things work, so that you have context for the meeting. I call Debbie The Professor, because to work for and with her is to learn about theater/film and television, and equally, life.
#1 BRING ALL YOU ARE TO THE PARTY
Debbie Allen was the director of A Different World. The show was truly about the black college experience- the challenges, the issues, the comedy, the relationships, the family we form through friendship and romance during a four-year higher education. I loved the cast, and the energy. Debbie, as a director, was masterful at taking the energy and igniting it to amazing results. There were musical episodes, dancing, the arts explained and dramatized- because Debbie Allen, in all her brilliance as a performer, actor and writer…is also a choreographer and director. The first lesson I learned from Debbie Allen is never leave any of your talent on the floor. Use your gifts in all their breadth- every time you put on a show. Debbie puts her heart and soul into every scene. I’ve never worked for another director like her.
#2 YOUR CHILDREN ARE YOUR LIFE, INCLUDE THEM IN YOURS
My first meeting with Debbie made me fall in love with her. In 1989, she was a young mother to DeVaughn, Thumpety (nickname Norm Jr.) and Vivian (named for her mom). Debbie is married to Norm Nixon, the great athlete- I saw he was a wonderful father too. The children (along with Joanne’s and any of the writers who had children) would come to the set after school. We shot the show at CBS Radford Studios in Studio City (the other shows on the lot- our neighbors – included Seinfeld, Grand, Thirty Something, Roseanne, you get the picture.) For the first time in my young work life, I saw a working mother include her children in the process of her work. The kids were well behaved (If Debbie Allen is your mother, you are probably going to be well behaved.)
#3 DO NOT ANALYZE, DRAMATIZE
Debbie’s sense of story is high octane, high energy, using bold concepts in set and costumes. She encouraged plots that moved, flights of fancy, memory scenes, and magical realism. Without saying it, she called on history, pulling threads from African storytelling to bring the show alive and give the words meaning. A script about the Underground Railroad became a mystery, another about AIDS a theatrical dream, and so it went, week to week, as the writers delivered the scripts to her for interpretation. She was always surprising as a director.
#4 HIRE HIRE HIRE ARTISTS
Debbie made sure that the college canteen, dorms and events were filled with students- and that the fictional students were learning in the time they spent on the set making Hillman real. She wanted as many young artists on the set as possible. She knew opportunity meant being included. She wanted as many young people within the sound of her voice to benefit from observing the process so they could someday make the process their own. I watched her give the extras business, taking time with them, including them in the process of making the show. The extras weren’t backdrop, she let them know that she had been a Gypsy (a Broadway dancer) and she knew that a chorus line was not there to fill in the story, but was the story. Debbie Allen taught me that everyone on the show was important- and like Tyrone Guthrie before her- every person, whether the star or the recurring player or the guest actor, mattered.
When it came time to direct, Debbie Allen was one of the signatories who recommended me to the Director’s Guild of America. When I joined the DGA, I thought of my grandfather, who was a machinist with a passion for a movie camera, and I thought of Debbie, who no matter where you are in the world, never forgets and stands at the ready to help you take a closer step toward your dreams. Debbie Allen deserved the glittering lifetime prize, and trust me, it is no ending to her amazing career- she is just getting started.
