To Salt-N-Pepa, this is how you do a Lifetime movie. Both subjects’ lives are conducive to being great Lifetime movies but one paid attention to how Lifetime movies flow and what the people wanted to see. Maybe it worked better because of the narration, but for me, Wendy left no stone unturned, including her own. She told all her business, other people’s business and even more. It’s how she’s made this name for herself. There was a lot of sugar coating with Salt and Pepa so we missed the good stuff. Plus, the transitions here worked better.
For years, I watched The Wendy Williams Show so most of her story I knew but there were some things surrounding her radio life that I either forgot or didn’t know. I love discovering new things about people as well as seeing it play out in a movie.
Let’s talk about Ciera Peyton. She was phenomenal! Much like Laila Odom as Pep, she had her mannerisms, the cadence of her speech, her voice and her attitude! I’ve seen Peyton in Tyler Perry’s A Madea Family Funeral, some of you may have seen her in Tyler Perry’s The Oval, a show I do not watch, but either way, she’s GOOD! Morocco Omari who played her ex-husband Kevin Hunter can be seen in the Pynk AKA Starz’s P-Valley and Fox’s Empire. He fits the hustler, street roll well. Epitome of typecasting. Now, she did skip Charlamagne Tha God. He was a fixture in her life on the radio for years. She’s how he got his start and I would think you would want to flaunt that you started someone’s career but I get it. He wasn’t a Spinderella. He didn’t change her life. Spin did.
In order for a biopic to work, you have to be completely honest with your audience and yourself. I don’t believe Salt-N-Pepa did that. I think they got excited because they got a Lifetime deal, which is find, but if we didn’t get the full, raw story told right, we lose interest. It was refreshing to see all these stories play out on screen and we got to sit in the pain she felt when her marriage fell apart, when she lost her children and when her family kept telling her she was fat. We got to take a breathe and not just dart to the next scene.
The movie was two hours long and I feel like I got more in the two hours than I got in Salt-N-Pepa’s three hours. I think because Wendy knows the gossip, and as I said before, watches Lifetime movies, she understands what these movies should look like. This is why her movie excelled.
BLACK WATCH 