C2 EZ RE T H E W A S H I N G T O N P O S T.S A T U R D A Y, O C T O B E R 5 , 2 0 1 9
she said in a 1998 interview with
the Television Academy. “Every-
one was elegant, everyone was
rich, everyone was traveling all
over the world, and I said, ‘That’s
what I want to do. That’s what I
need to do.’”
Carroll reached out to Aaron
Spelling and suggested to one of
the producer’s colleagues that
“Dynasty” — which had dealt,
however controversially, with
homosexuality and other hot-but-
ton issues — had tackled just
about everything except racial
integration. To do that, they first
had to integrate the cast.
But nothing happened until
Barbra Streisand invited Carroll
to sing a song from “Yentl” at the
1983 Golden Globe Awards.
Knowing Spelling would be there,
she dressed the part. After the
ceremony, Carroll went to the
private Los Angeles nightclub
where Spelling and his colleagues
were celebrating. Spelling later
told People that after seeing Car-
roll, he and “Dynasty” co-creator
Esther Shapiro “looked at each
other and said, 'My God, she is
‘Dynasty.’ ”
When Carroll came on board,
she had one mandate for the
show’s writers: “Don’t try to write
for who you think I am — write for
a white man who wants to be
wealthy and powerful.”
Spoiler alert: Dominique De-
veraux turned out to be the sur-
prise half sister of oil baron Blake
Carrington. The role led to epic
showdowns with Blake’s vindic-
tive ex-wife, Alexis (Joan Collins).
As news of Carroll’s death
spread Friday, her impact could
be seen in social media posts from
prominent black women in enter-
tainment.
“Thanks for helping clear the
path for me and so many others,”
Oprah Winfrey wrote.
Filmmaker Ava DuVernay
tweeted that Carroll “blazed trails
through dense forests and ele-
gantly left diamonds along the
path for the rest of us to follow.”
“Diahann Carroll you taught us
so much,” wrote Debbie Allen,
who directed the actress in her
recurring role as Whitley Gil-
bert’s mother on “A Different
World.” “We are stronger, more
beautiful and risk takers because
of you,” Allen added. “We will
forever sing your praises and
speak your name.”
“I love you for eternity. With all
my heart. I am because of you,”
Washington wrote.
[email protected]fourth season. Carroll had sought
out the role after falling in love
with the soap. “I thought, ‘If this
isn’t the biggest hoot I’ve ever
seen, and the world is loving it,'”be the first black b---- on televi-
sion,” she told People magazine.
Her character, Dominique De-
veraux, was shrouded in mystery
when she joined “Dynasty” in itsJust two years earlier, NBC had
struggled to find a national spon-
sor for a star-studded variety pro-
gram hosted by crooner Nat King
Cole, who later remarked that
“Madison Avenue is afraid of the
dark.” “Julia” defied expectations
— landing in the Nielsen Top 10 in
its first season — and led to a
series of accolades for Carroll,
who in 1969 became the first
African American to win a Golden
Globe — and the first African
American woman to receive an
Emmy nomination.
But the show was controversial
amid the racial unrest that fol-
lowed the 1968 assassination of
the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
An Ebony article that year noted
that “for all its merits as a televi-
sion ‘first,’" the sitcom had drawn
criticism “for not projecting a
male head-of-the-family image”
and “for showing Julia and [her]
son leading a happily integrated
life among middle class whites.”
“However Julia is presented,
she represents another and more
realistic evolution purely because
of the circumstances of her exis-
tence,” Carroll told the magazine.
“She has her faults, but Julia is
still quite special in that she’s
bright and curious. I identify very
much with Julia.”
And the role would have impli-
cations for future generations,
Carroll told Ebony. “Black chil-
dren are going to have a marvel-
ous time now. Their self-image is
going to be so much greater.”
On “Pioneers of Television,”
Carroll recalled that in 1968, sev-
eral years ahead of Norman Lear’s
socially conscious sitcom slate,
television shows were wary of
addressing race. “It was absolute-
ly ‘let’s stay away from that, that is
too controversial,’ so we knew
that going in,” Carroll said on
PBS. “That first you make the
success — after you’ve done that,
you can make other steps.”
“There was nothing like this
young successful mother on the
air,” she added. “We thought that
it might be a very good stepping
stone.”
After “Julia” went off the air in
1971, Carroll returned to the stage
and the big screen, which landed
her an Oscar nomination (for
“Claudine”) in 1975. Nine years
later, as Carroll prepared to take
on the role of a glamorous busi-
nesswoman in the iconic prime-
time soap “Dynasty,” she set her
sights on another first: “I want to
APPRECIATION FROM C1
place for older people who “want
to be 21 again” — and for younger
people who “want to be 21 for-
ever.” People go to Forever 21 to
try out different versions of
themselves: younger, older,
spunkier, hipster-ier. It’s the
place you go the summer before
college, to buy clothes your moth-
er will never see. You might look
at a velvet miniskirt and think,
well, usually that wouldn’t be me.
But it’s only $17. And my friends
are here, telling me I look good.
So, you think, maybe, just today,
I’ll try.
Chynah Sital and Jeneal John-
son, both 18, have shopped at
Forever 21 together since they
were in middle school. But
they’re not surprised that the
company is struggling financial-
ly. It’s just not a place you’d go to
shop online, they say. The experi-
ence of being at the store —
sifting through racks of nonsen-
sical graphic T-shirts with friends
until you find that one thing you
like — is the whole point.
“When I shop online, I don’t go
to Forever 21,” Sital says. The
website doesn’t have many of the
cheapest items in the store, she
says. “And I don’t like the way the
website looks, either.”
“It’s just really old looking,”
Johnson says. “It’s been the same
since we were in eighth grade.”
When she and her friends shop
online, she says, they usually go
to online-first shopping plat-
forms such as Fashion Nova and
PrettyLittleThing. “Forever 21
just hadn’t developed well tech-
nologically.”
Settles has a different theory.
There was a time when being
“totally random” was cool, she
says. But now Forever 21 is clearly
trying too hard.
“I knew something was wrong
when they made that Hot Chee-
tos collection,” she says.
[email protected]well below minimum wage.)
This particular Forever 21 has
been a fixture in Woodbridge for
well over a decade, says Natalie
Holmes, 26, who is combing the
racks for “crushed velvet.”
Holmes knows because she re-
members coming here as a teen-
ager. It was a big deal when the
store expanded a few years ago,
reopening with faux white mar-
ble siding across the storefront
and a three-foot-tall reflective
sign: “XXI Forever.”
Ashley Stevenson, 34, remem-
bers that, too. She’s been coming
here since she moved to the
suburbs from downtown Wash-
ington almost 10 years ago. To-
day, browsing with her mom, she
has selected a rainbow leotard.
But it is much more than a
rainbow leotard.
The first time Stevenson went
to a Forever 21, she was 25, single
and paying her way through grad
school with a hostess job in the
city. Every time she got a pay-
check, she’d head to the three-
story location downtown, stock-
ing up on whatever seemed to be
in style. When she went out to
9:30 Club, a popular D.C. concert
venue, she wanted to look the
part. Her favorite item was a
jacket covered in sequins and
white gorilla fur.
Stevenson doesn’t want to lose
her younger self. But, sometimes,
living in the suburbs with two
kids and pregnant with her third,
she worries that she might. So
every couple of months, she plans
nights out at 9:30 Club with her
husband. And she comes to For-
ever 21 to find something to wear.
“It kind of makes me feel like I
can actually, maybe, be sexy
again,” she says, holding out the
hanger with the leotard. “Maybe I
can reconnect with that person
who likes to paint her fingernails
and does her hair.”
Most people told me they start-
ed coming to Forever 21 in mid-
dle or high school, when they
were still figuring out what they
liked — or what they were sup-
posed to like. Kayla Settles, 19,
used to come here after school
with her older sister and her
sister’s friends. She’d ask the
older girls whether they liked
what she’d picked out, trying to
play it cool, even though her
decision to buy rested entirely on
their answer.
“I’d be like, ‘Hey, do you think
this is cute?’ ” says Settles, who
came to the store today because
she’d heard about the bankruptcy
and assumed there would be
good deals. “We all wanted to be
like the older kids.”
Forever 21 co-founder Do Won
Chang describes the store as aFOREVER 21 FROM C1attempt to remold her. She could
console Batwoman with the sis-
terly idea that franchise is forever
and malleability equals durabili-
ty. If the story doesn’t click this
time, maybe the next version will.
[email protected]Batwoman (one hour) premieres
Sunday at 8 p.m. on CW; Nancy
Drew (one hour) premieres
Wednesday at 9 p.m. on CW.ment as an irritant; her courage
has morphed into an overstated
petulance. On top of that, the big
mystery — stretched over two
episodes, probably more — fails to
register as a matter of ongoing
interest: A bad guy’s girlfriend is
murdered while the town obsess-
es over the legendary ghost of a
dead beauty queen.
Nancy’s been around long
enough to withstand this shoddylives in a seaside burg called
Horseshoe Bay (whither River
Heights?) and pretty much hates
life.
After the death of her mother,
Nancy let her grades slide and
blew off her college applications.
Now she’s taking a defiant gap
year, working as a diner waitress
and sneaking off to have quickie
sex with Ned Nickerson (Tunji
Kasim) at the auto garage where
he works as a mechanic.
Everyone you remember has
been recast in a grittier guise:
George Fan (Leah Lewis) is Nan-
cy’s boss and resents her for being
a popular kid. Bess Marvin (Mad-
dison Jaizani) is secretly living in
a trailer. Nancy’s attorney father,
Carson (Scott Wolf ), is hot-tem-
pered and hiding something. In-
stead of seeming empowered and
cool, the show is dreadful, putting
far too much effort into giving
Nancy and her world a darker
edge. It’s the “Riverdale” effect —
once the Archies went to seed,
everyone must follow.
Even Nancy’s amateur sleuth-
ing skills are demeaned here and
made difficult rather than de-
lightful. Her intelligence and cu-
riosity are seen by her father,
friends and local law enforce-fictional teenage sleuth with the
titian blond hair is coming up on
her 90th birthday, and like Bar-
bie, she’s endured a lot of make-
overs and modernizing, launch-
ing a cottage industry in aca-
demia, which takes a particular
interest in how she’s portrayed
and what she’s meant to genera-
tions of young girls. (As a boy who
preferred reading Nancy Drew
mystery books over those dopey
Hardy Boys, I guess I don’t count.)
Adapting Nancy to television
and movies is a spotty business,
strewn with attempts. Hardly a
pilot season goes by, it seems,
without someone pitching a re-
vamped Nancy Drew series. And
who recalls that the ABC series in
the 1970s, supposedly alternating
each week with a Hardy Boys
mystery, was overcome by Shaun
Cassidy fever? (If you do, wave
your cane.)
“Nancy Drew” (premiering
Wednesday, also on CW) wipes
the entire slate shockingly clean,
primarily by making Nancy more
impulsive and depressing. Pro-
ducers Josh Schwartz and Steph-
anie Savage (of “Gossip Girl” and
the “Dynasty” reboot) and writer
Noga Landau have given us a
Nancy (Kennedy McMann) who“Arrow”) from executive producer
Greg Berlanti (and, in “Batwom-
an’s” case, writer Caroline Dries).
We all know there’s a deficit of
female superheroes. “Supergirl,”
launched with such satisfying
vim four years ago on CBS, mi-
grated to CW, where it has flut-
tered and flattened out to almost
nothing. “Batwoman” is a missed
opportunity to take a character
who is unfamiliar to pop-culture
passersby (she’s only been around
in comic-book form since 2006, a
relative newborn to the genre)
and push her past whatever
comic-book gender boundaries
remain. Yet, when it comes to
both expectation and example,
this Batwoman feels disappoint-
ingly curtailed, as if she’s holding
something back.
“If I were going to save you in a
dramatic fashion,” Kate tells So-
phie, “I would have dressed as
Wonder Woman.”
If that’s what it would take to
get things going, I’m all for it.
Nancy Drew, meanwhile, has a
far longer history and accumulat-
ed cachet than Batwoman. Theagainst Batman doesn’t prevent
her from raiding his closet and
utilizing his toys. Gotham is left to
wonder who this newer, shapelier
Dark Knight is. “I was running
toward everything that didn’t
want me,” Kate confesses in a
lame voice-over. “A military acad-
emy, a private army, my own fa-
ther. I spent 15 years searching for
a place I didn’t fit. And I think I
finally found it.... I see the
freedom to be myself, to play by
my own rules.”
While I’d love to offer “Bat-
woman” as the ideal antidote to
the macho psychosis of Holly-
wood’s new “Joker” movie, I’m
sorry to report that, despite her
big talk, Batwoman is pretty
much a nobody on the TV screen,
a dud as both a vigilante crime-
fighter and a ticked-off relative
with unresolved grief issues.
Mostly, she’s just another paint-
by-numbers CW superhero, join-
ing a collection of other, stead-
fastly rote shows (“Supergirl,”
“The Flash,” the soon-departing
TV REVIEWS FROM C1
A petulant Nancy Drew
ROBERT FALCONER/THE CW
Kennedy McMann, seen with Tunji Kasim, plays Nancy Drew.A place to try on personas
CAROLINE KITCHENER FOR THE LILY
Forever 21, which made a name
for itself with its low prices,
declared bankruptcy. Hundreds
of stores will close worldwide.Carroll broke barriers, won accolades along the way
NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK VIA GETTY IMAGES
Diahann Carroll played the widowed mother of Marc Copage’s
character, Corey, on “Julia.” The show aired from 1968 to 1971.NICK UT/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Carroll and Billy Dee Williams were co-stars on “Dynasty,” where
she played the ruthless Dominique Deveraux.“Don’t try to write for who you think I am —
write for a white man who wants to be wealthy and powerful.”
Diahann Carroll, to the writers of “Dynasty”THEATRE
$25 202-355-6330Caos on F
923 F St., NW, Wasington DC
UniversePlayers2.orgA woman. A man. A coyote. An upheaval? Presented by
The Edge of the Universe Players 2. Directed by Michael
Chamberlin. The characters will communicate with you,
bearing a message about the future.Oct. 4-13
Fri., Sat. 8:00,
Sun. 2:00 & 7:00My Barking Dog
by Eric Coble
The Edge...In Spanish with
English surtitles$30--$48GALA Theatre
3333 14th Street, NW
202-234-7174
http://www.galatheatre.orgA masterpiece of the Spanish Golden Age with scuffles,
love scenes, comedy and poetry that rivals Shakespeare.Thru Oct 13
Thurs – Sat at 8 pm
Sun at 2 pmLA VIDA ES SUEÑO
Life is a DreamCOMEDY
Discounts available
for groups of 10 or
more.
Call 202-312-1427$36
Ronald Reagan Building
1300 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
ticketmaster.comA musical, political satire.
We put the MOCK in Democracy!
Info: 202.312.1555
http://www.capsteps.comFridays & Saturdays
at 7:30pmMake America
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BNL 16-2898