Who Would Play Your Parents in Your Biopic?

𝓺𝓾𝓮𝓼𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓬𝓾𝓵𝓽𝓾𝓻𝓮 💬

More from Hung Up this week: Blake Lively accuses Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment and a smear campaign … Hung Up x Gossip Time: The Paparazzi Photos That Defined 2024 … and a post from the archives now that this divorce was just filed

Courtney B. Vance, Whitney Houston, and Denzel Washington in The Preacher’s Wife. Photo: Buena Vista.

It’s the holidays!! And this is soooo hugely embarrassing but I’m home and bored and miss blogging. I know I write this newsletter, but Hung Up is just as much about you: your ideas, your obsessions, your opinions. Tonight I’m turning the tables, especially since I’m still reheating Christmas leftovers and hanging out with family. Who would play your parents in your biopic, and why?

My dad’s distinguishing characteristic is his deep, James Earl Jones-y voice. I’m too used to it, I guess, it doesn’t phase me at all. It’s very funny to hear him lighten his tone when he talks to Remy, whom he sweetly tolerates. He’d definitely be played by Courtney B. Vance: formal and firm, except when he gets excited about something. (Seeing musicals on Broadway, a football game, keeping plants alive.) Everything that made Kim Fields an ineffective real housewife would make her good at playing my mom. It takes her a long time to get worked up, but when she does, she doesn’t get cold she gets sharp. (Growing up I called her alter ego “Mean Mommy,” the one who wouldn’t play games with me in the car or got mad at me for taking too long to get out of the house.)

There’s not a world in which Auntie, my great aunt, isn’t played by Lynn Whitfield: elegant, opinionated hot-tempered but dynamic. Uncle¹, her husband, would definitely be Bill Cobbs, a character actor who made me smile every time I saw him in anything. We are not a small-personality family. 

Share as much or as little about who you’d cast to play your family in the comments xx

1. The other night I said I needed the vacuum cleaner and Uncle (hardheaded) was suspicious and didn’t want me cleaning unnecessarily. I told him that Remy left behind some crumbs after chewing a bone. “She’s my dog, Uncle, please let me clean up after her!”

He rolled his eyes. “She’s our dog.” They are in their 80s and still sending me to the moon and back lmaoooo