Photo: Mark Seliger for New York Magazine |
For the past 25 years, Taraji P. Henson has specialized in a specific type of character. She is usually a mother, or mother figure, facing a crisis. She may be tough, but she has a redeeming effect on others — whether they’re a philandering man-child (Baby Boy), an adoptee aging in reverse (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), or a trio of feuding record-label scions (Empire). She is “the moral compass,” the 55-year-old actress told me in April while making her Broadway debut as Bertha Holly, the big-hearted matriarch in Debbie Allen’s revival of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, by August Wilson. Bertha runs a Pittsburgh boardinghouse with her husband, Seth, played by Cedric the Entertainer, in 1911 and is part of an ensemble of Black characters a generation removed from enslavement. The couple takes in a boarder, Herald Loomis, whose search for his missing wife draws the house into a reckoning with forces — both human and supernatural — that haunt everyone who is rooming there.
It is Henson’s saintliest iteration of the mothering archetype to date. |
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Photo: VisitBritain/Rama Knight |
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| Live your love story on your holiday starring Great Britain |
As home of the world’s most loved and highest grossing films and franchises, the real star is Britain itself. From unmissable city scenes in northern England to award-winning countryside views in Scotland and scene-stealing coastlines in Wales, mix cinematic splendor with characterful experiences. All aboard for swoonworthy sights and romantic locations – it’s time to visit the real star of the show.
Plan your trip |
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| “I was willing to go and take that risk. There was no way I was going to go against that alliance ever.” |
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“Sub-Zero died, Kung Lao died, and they all came back. There’s a plan.” |
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Young people entangle with friends and Sims in Eliya Smith’s new play. |
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