The latest “Black Girl Stuff” episode aired this week, and we hope you’re enjoying the season so far! Akilah Ffriend, Brii Renee, Demetria Obilor, Tori Brixx, and special guest host Stacy Ike brought all of the energy to the panel. The episode included discussions about friendships and ending them, the relationship between Black mothers and their daughters, and Coco Jones and Novi Brown also joined this week! Catch “Black Girl Stuff” every Tuesday on REVOLT at 9 p.m. ET as well as every Wednesday on our website, YouTube channel, and app. Plus, watch the latest episode here.
1. Ending Friendships
The girls kicked off this week’s “Black Girl Stuff” installment by diving into the comments to discuss the experience of losing a friend. One Twitter user, __Nubiaa, tweeted, “We don’t talk about how to manage and grow in friendship enough. Or about how devastating it is to lose a friend,” igniting an intense discussion on social media. Ffriend talked a bit about what losing a companion felt like for her: “I’ve lost friends for different reasons, a couple of reasons. But the one for growing apart… it hurts because you can’t really blame it on anything.”
Renee talked about the personal impact losing a friend had on her mental health and how it’s made her question herself before: “I do feel like friends are the family that we get to choose. We don’t get to pick our family, but my friends are the ones that I get to hand-select and pick. So sometimes [you] lose, and I lost a friend, and it was based off principle. I was like, ‘Wow, I never thought you would do that to me. I thought I was different to you.’ And also, it was like, ‘Am I a bad picker? Did I misjudge who you were?’ So, it made me question my own discernment.”
2. Mommy and Me
Many can agree that the relationship a woman has with her mother has the potential to be one of the most valuable of her life. That said, the ladies talked about some of the reasons tensions may arise between a Black mother and her daughter. Ike shared her thoughts and said, “I feel like Black moms, they sometimes impose their fears and their joys on you, right? They’ll say you can’t do that because they haven’t been able to do it, or you couldn’t go that way. So, you have to really monitor… ‘OK, Mom, is this you just being fearful? Or is this you trying to protect me?’ And sometimes that starts happening around the teenage years.”
Obilor also spoke about her relationship with her mother as a Black woman raised by a white woman, sharing, “My mom is white, and she raised a Black biracial woman, and growing up, our relationship… I mean, I’m pretty headstrong. I’m an Aries, and she’s a Pisces. I’ll just leave it at that, right. But my mom is like my best friend, and I just feel like my mom has always had my best interests at heart. And her intentions have always reflected that, although I may not have received it as that. All right. I mean, she’s done a lot to try and protect me, and I think that’s just the job of a mother. So I feel like, I mean, it goes beyond race at this point. I just think it’s a mother and daughter thing.” One thing the ladies all felt was the transition their relationships with their mothers went through as they grew up.
3. Coco Jones Joins the Panel
Coco Jones has been in the game for a minute. Whether you recognize her from Disney’s Let It Shine or from her latest role as Hilary Banks in “Bel-Air,” she’s been putting in the work for years, and she talked all about it with the hosts. When discussing her transition from a child star to an adult actress, Jones said, “I’m really grateful that, like, I got to experience a lot of the pros of being on a big machine like Disney Channel, but I didn’t get too tied into it. I never had the show — I was actually supposed to have a show, and it just didn’t pan out. At the time, I didn’t understand why. But looking back, I’m like it’s so hard already to break out of that Disney star mold that if I did have that, there’s no way they’re not gonna see me as that character for the rest of my life.”
She spoke a bit about the normalcy she was able to experience in her youth due to things not working out the exact way she wanted them to: “I also feel like because I had all the success young, I kind of got to be a little normal. Again, like, as I was coming into my own — literally, I didn’t go to college. But I went to USC because I was partying. I met all of these great girls, and they became really close to me. And they didn’t see me as, like, some disease. They just saw me as a regular girl. I feel like I was figuring out myself, and getting to be around peers that weren’t looking at me crazy, and that’s kind of what kept me normal.” Coco Jones just launched a new cooking series with Terrell Grice, the show “Bel-Air” has been renewed for a second season, and she’s been steadily releasing new music whilst working with legends such as Babyface.
4. Novi Brown Joins the Panel
Novi Brown is best known for her role in Tyler Perry’s “Sistas,” but she’s now venturing into the horror genre for her latest offering. When asked whether the transition from drama to horror was difficult for her, she said, “It’s time to… I think we ready to bust things down. You know, I want to do stunts. I want to have fun. I want to push my body. I want to just stand up for myself. There’s a lot of stories about us and our abuse, but never us fighting back. So I would like to be part of those stories.” When asked about how she’s been handling her finances, she said, “Oh, there’s so much because the checks range. As you all know, every production has a different value. So I’ve done jobs for $80, and I’ve done jobs for more. So it’s really dependent on what your specific goal is. I know what my goals are. I’ve done jobs for free. I just flew myself out to do a movie. I invest in myself. Whether I’m hiring hair [and] makeup, getting my wardrobe, you ladies know. The look? Yeah, man, it’s part of it, [it] all matters.” Her latest film, Alone in the Dark, is a Tubi Original and can be streamed there!
5. Marsai Martin and Dr. Jimmeka Anderson
Marsai Martin may be best known for her role in “Black-ish,” but she’s been killing it behind the scenes as well. Not only is she the youngest person to sign a first-look deal at Universal, her film Little also made her the youngest African-American executive producer on a major Hollywood movie. Martin’s work in the industry is what’s made her one of this week’s BG Bosses.
Our next BG Boss, Dr. Jimmeka Anderson, is the founder of the Black Girls Film Camp, a nonprofit that gives young Black girls the space to tell their own stories through film. And her program is free! Props to her!