{"id":137763,"date":"2019-09-28T15:28:17","date_gmt":"2019-09-28T19:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blackfilm.com\/read\/?p=137763"},"modified":"2019-09-28T17:23:47","modified_gmt":"2019-09-28T21:23:47","slug":"exclusive-actress-yvette-nicole-brown-talks-about-her-screenwriting-debut-co-starring-in-bet-always-a-bridesmaid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackfilm.com\/read\/exclusive-actress-yvette-nicole-brown-talks-about-her-screenwriting-debut-co-starring-in-bet-always-a-bridesmaid\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Actress Yvette Nicole Brown Talks About Her Screenwriting Debut & Co-Starring In BET’s Always A Bridesmaid"},"content":{"rendered":"

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BET will air the romantic comedy\u00a0\u2018Always A Bridesmaids\u2019<\/strong>\u00a0on September 28 at 8pm on BET and BET Her. The film was directed by\u00a0Trey Haley<\/strong>\u00a0from a script written by actress\u00a0Yvette Nicole Brown<\/strong>. Best known for her acting work in the NBC comedy series\u00a0Community\u00a0<\/strong>and appearances on several TV shows, this marks her screenwriting debut.<\/p>\n

It will later air on 09\/29\/19 on BET VOD, BET.com, BET App, BET International.<\/p>\n

Corina James (Javicia Leslie) has been a bridesmaid so many times that she is starting to wonder if she will ever be a bride. Deciding to no longer be a lady-in-waiting, she bravely re-enters the dating scene. Always A Bridesmaid ponders the question, \u2018Is love and marriage for everyone?\u2019 And if so, how do you get over your own stuff in order to find and keep your one? Time will only tell if Corina will Always Be A Bridesmaid or if the love of her life is around the corner.<\/p>\n

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Javicia Leslie\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Jordan Calloway<\/strong>\u00a0star in the film. Brown\u00a0will play a supporting role along with\u00a0Marcel Spears,\u00a0Brandon Micheal Hall,\u00a0Affion Crockett,\u00a0Michelle Mitchenor,\u00a0Bernard David Jones,\u00a0Tosin Morohunfola,\u00a0Meagan Tandy,\u00a0James Bland,\u00a0Richard Lawson,\u00a0Telma Hopkins,\u00a0Jasmin Brown<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Amber Chardae Robison<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Blackfilm.com spoke with Brown about writing this film.<\/p>\n

What led you to writing a screenplay for this film?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yvette Nicole Brown:<\/strong> I actually wrote it 20 years ago when I was an office temp. I just wrote the film that didn\u2019t I see. I love romantic comedies like \u2018While You Were Sleeping\u2019 When Harry Met Sally,\u2019 but there weren\u2019t any PG-13 films like that with black people.\u00a0 So I wrote what I wanted to see. So yeah, that\u2019s the story behind it.<\/p>\n

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Did you go back and update it so that it can be more conventional with today’s period?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yvette Nicole Brown:<\/strong> Yes. You have to update it otherwise you\u2019re just filming a period piece (laughs). Twenty years ago, there was no internet. There was but it wasn\u2019t the way we have it now. There was no social media, no cell phones. There\u2019s a lot of things that we have now that we didn\u2019t have back then. So you go back and you just update what needs to be updates. But I\u2019m proud to say that the main themes and most of the main scenes stayed exactly the same from 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

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Why did it take so long before this screenplay got greenlit? Did you write other projects?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yvette Nicole Brown:<\/strong> I actually wasn\u2019t trying to write it for it to be greenlit? Like I said, I wrote it so that I would have a romantic comedy with us in mind that I could enjoy. Back in the day, we would put a DVD on to watch a movie. I know it sounds nerdy and corny, but I would just read my script whenever I wanted to revisit Mark and Corina. So it\u2019s not like I was shopping it or whatever. It literally was written and then sat on a shelf, unless I wanted to read it. And one day I went to lunch with my wonderful friend ND Brown, who created Tridestined Studios (a great film production company) during those same 20 years. We met to talk about life and she asked me if I write and I told her that I used to. I told her I had a script from back then and she asked if she could read it. Once she finished she said she loved it and asked if she could option it and it ultimately became a film. It it wasn\u2019t like I wrote it in and was like fighting for 20 years to get a made. I need to be fair and say that\u2019s not the case.<\/p>\n

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Did you have any hand as far as the cast and the director?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yvette Nicole Brown:<\/strong>\u00a0Trey Haley, our wonderful director is also a partner in Tridestined and he\u2019s their dedicated director whenever they do a project. So I knew going in that it probably would be Trey directing the film. If I had decided that I wanted a woman to do it or if I had another director in mind, I\u2019m sure ND would have been open to that. But Trey is such a wonderful director that the idea of using him was just the perfect thing to do. When you see the film, you\u2019ll see that he\u2019s got such a great touch and is really great at just getting to the emotions of a scene and helping actors find their way. He was the perfect choice for it. As far as casting, we all cast it together. We made lists of who we wanted and we looked at reels and clips online. Our method was non-traditional, but we found the most amazing actors to fill out the cast.<\/p>\n

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As you wrote the screenplay, what did you want to stick out more the romance or the comedy?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yvette Nicole Brown:<\/strong>I never thought about it but as I think about it now I probably wanted the romance to stand out more. We all have seen funny movies. They were, even back then when I wrote this, a lot of funny movies for black people. Like I said, it was that particular brand of comedy, the PG-13 romantic comedy that we didn\u2019t have. So I wanted to create a romantic experience for these characters. But I also want people watching this to enjoy themselves. So romance was number one, comedy was number two and the drama was added just so that there is a twist, because otherwise you meet the characters and easily predict that they will get together. There should be some sort of climb towards love because that\u2019s the way it is in real life.<\/p>\n

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When\u00a0the trailer first came out, some folks may have thought that this the black version of ’27 Dresses.’\u00a0 Is it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yvette Nicole Brown:<\/strong>No,\u00a0because honestly, I wrote it before 27 Dresses. I wrote it so long along way before that film came out. So when 27 dresses came out, I wondered if anyone had seen my script (laughs). Mine was first. I do remember when I wrote it, I gave it to my agent and my agent had sent it around a couple of places so I wondered. Before this, no one had any stories about bridesmaids, and then all of a sudden everywhere I looked there were all these movies about bridesmaids. It felt a little suspect, but to answer your question,\u00a027 dresses did not exist when I wrote this film.<\/p>\n

Do you want to continue to write?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Yvette Nicole Brown:<\/strong>I think after this experience and how wonderful it was working with Tridestined and the actors, I think I want to do a sequel to this film, for sure. When I was writing all those years ago, I wrote like three other scripts in that period that probably could be period pieces or we could update them and shoot those as well. They\u2019re not all romantic comedies. There\u2019s a couple of different genres in there.\u00a0 I\u2019m blessed to have a great career as an actress, and a host and a voiceover artist. I have a lot of other things that I\u2019m doing. So I don\u2019t have a lot of time to write like I used to and I regret that. I missed those stretches of time when I could just dive in and create a whole world of characters from my mind. I don\u2019t have the time like that anymore.<\/p>\n

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There are a lot of speaking parts in this movie. What’s the challenge of creating so many parts to making the film flow cohesively?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yvette Nicole Brown:<\/strong>Each of the characters in this script were based on someone that I knew. I\u2019m not saying that it\u2019s their story just that their voice and manner of speaking is the same. A lot of my friends are performers and are colorful people who have very distinct voices. So if I go out to lunch with six friends, they don\u2019t sound alike. They don\u2019t think about the world the same, but they all coexist at that table, right? So when I was writing, I just imagined what would each friend would say in that circumstance? What would my friends like Stacy or Buffy or Nicole or Jenean say in this circumstance? Each of those women in my mind are so unique.<\/p>\n

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So Denise, Janelle, Tamara and Corina (characters from the movie) were unique in their voices. So for me, it\u2019s not hard. I have a writer friend who came to our premiere and we had a Q&A after and she raised her hand and asked that question. So I don\u2019t know if maybe that\u2019s a gift God gave me to be able to write dialogue in a way where everyone\u2019s distinct? I don\u2019t know. But that part wasn\u2019t hard for me. I was channeling something bigger than me, I guess.<\/p>\n

Where do we see you next?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yvette Nicole Brown:<\/strong>I\u2019m going to be in the live-action remake of\u00a0\u201cLady and the Tramp\u201d that\u2019s coming out on the Disney+ streaming service on November 12th<\/p>\n