Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Reesa Teesa’s story about her insane former marriage has Black TikTok in a chokehold. It has much of the internet in the same chokehold. When I heard that there was a 52-part TikTok series called “Who TF Did I Marry?!?” I said there’s no way I’m watching that. I could watch multiple movies in that time. But let me just watch part 1 and see what’s what.
The next thing I knew, I was washing the dishes and listening to Teesa say “Part 37…” That’s when I said, OK who’s going to star in the movie version of this? Because like “Zola,” a great film that started as a thread on Twitter, “Who TF Did I Marry?” could be a wild movie. But who you cast depends on what kind of movie you want to make.
Perhaps you want it to be a dark drama with ominous music and lighting that says you should be suspicious. You want the unsettling, something-is-wrong-but-you-don’t-quite-know-what vibe of “Get Out” by Jordan Peele. Then you get a dramatic queen, someone who can sear the painful story right into your soul. Someone like Viola Davis or Regina King, who are amazing in serious dramas. They can bring out Teesa’s realness, her Southern down-homeness and her intelligence but also give you that creeping sense that I feel when something is rotten but I don’t know what.
But then again maybe you want to go more comedic and bring out Teesa’s sense of “how much more am I supposed to take?” She’s resilient, for sure, but for a while, her life was a monsoon of crazy and that could be played for laughs, albeit laugh-to-keep-from-crying laughs. If you’re going that route, you look at Niecy Nash, Sherri Shepherd or Keke Palmer, sisters who are both hysterical and real. They could honor Teesa’s strength in dealing with all of this madness while also helping bring out the funny in the…
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