About Town
People, Places, Preoccupations
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 29 OCTOBER 16, 2019
Da’Vine
Joy
Randolph
T
he Dolemite Is My
Name audition came to
Da’Vine Joy Randolph
in 2018 like countless
others had — with little time to
prepare and virtually no informa-
tion about the project. The Tony
nominee (for Ghost the Musical)
and Yale School of Drama grad did
not know, for instance, that the
movie was a passion project Eddie
Murphy had been trying to get
made for years, that he was set to
star as 1970s comedian Rudy Roy
Moore alongside a who’s-who of
black comedic stars (Wesley Snipes,
Chris Rock, Tituss Burgess). She did
know, however, that the part she
was up for was a character named
Lady Reed — a fact she shared with
her father, a school administra-
tor in Hershey, Pennsylvania (her
mother is a teacher).
“My dad was like, ‘Whoa,
whoa, whoa. Dolemite and Lady
Reed?’ ” Randolph says. “ ‘Those
are legends in our culture. You
go in there and be a black woman
in all of her richness.’ ” Armed
with her father’s advice — and
after finding the seminal blax-
ploitation movie Dolemite on
Amazon’s Brown Sugar channel
— Randolph nailed her mul-
tiple auditions for director Craig
Brewer’s tale of the 1975 film’s
hilariously disastrous shoot.
In the movie, which is in
theaters and arrives Oct. 25 on
Netflix, Randolph plays Reed as
a stereotype-subverting comic
who becomes Moore’s protegeNEXT BIG THING
The Dolemite Is My Name
star went ‘toe-to-toe’
with Eddie Murphy
By Rebecca Keegan
Ph oto graph e d by Aus tin HargraveVITAL STATS
AGE 33
BORN
Philadelphia
BIG BREAK
Dolemite Is My Name
REPS
Paradigm,
Lighthouse Entertainment
“The audition scene was
really powerful,” says Da’Vine
Joy Randolph of reading for
Dolemite Is My Name. “It
was truly like a love letter to
a black woman.” She was
photographed Sept. 7 at
Four Seasons Toronto.