CraveOnline: What is coming up for you?
Pam Grier: I’m going to be doing a one-hour series called “Black Hawk” produced and co-written with Benny Richburg. His tenure is several years with “Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” “Martin” and “Jaime Foxx Show.” We came up with a one hour that’s been sold to eOne. We’re preparing to go to the studio. Then we have an order and they do a full order, so we’re getting ready with stories, story lines, stunts and training.
What will you play in “Black Hawk?”
I play a Homeland Security leader brought out of retirement, because we need to fill in other areas that are lacking in Homeland Security.
So it’s a one-hour action show?
One-hour action female driven. Tone, “Strike Back/Homeland.”
eOne is a great company. They’re doing a lot of the smaller films we’re discovering.
They have been just extraordinary. They’re so supportive. I really look forward to working with them.
How different is television now than even when you did “The L Word” 10 years ago?
It depends on how you define television, because that was Showtime, kind of a soap opera, not a comedy, not a drama but a dramedy. That’s a completely different medium, completely different style. When you do comedy, sometimes it’s single camera or it’s multi-camera. With drama, its’ going to be different. The dynamics are different. It’s like a mini-film.
When you did Jackie Brown, did Tarantino give you a movie homework list? Or were they all your movies?
He did and had posters in his office. We rehearsed. We rehearsed two weeks. Everyone had to rehearse. If you don’t rehearse with Quentin, you don’t do his movie. He won’t work with you, so you have to rehearse with him. We played catch up. We didn’t spend a lot of time because he was really working on the film, but just to find out how much he knew about my generation, he wanted it to look like it was a film out of the ‘70s. The style of long shots, 15 minute scenes, he really wanted to do that which was fantastic. I loved watching him work. If you notice, a lot of his films, the costume, they look period, timeless, look like period pieces. The cars, the music.
But no list of movies you had to watch beforehand?
He did in a way. He said, “Think of your life as a movie.” Okay, I got it.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
