Debbie Allen Interview From People Magazine November 1988 discussing "A Different World".It's a
Different World for Dancer and Choreographer Debbie Allen: She's Moved to
Prime-Time Directing
By John Stark,
Mike Alexander
Director
Debbie Allen scans the set of A Different World. There's Kadeem Hardison,
tossing a football with a stage manager. There's Jasmine Guy, sifting through
some mail. And there's Allen's 4-year-old daughter, Vivian, who's spending the
day on the Hollywood soundstage. "Hi, Vivian. Mommy sees you!" Allen
coos into her body mike before yelping, "Oooeee!" and running across
the set to scoop her daughter into her arms. A moment later Vivian is once
again earthbound and Allen, with her 1-year-old son, Norman, straddling her
hip, is back at her post, directing her cast.
Over the past
several years, the student dubbed Miss Versatile by her 1968 high school class
has handled career changes with equal aplomb. The Fame-ous
actress-dancer-singer-choreographer was barely surprised when Bill Cosby asked
her to produce and direct the second season of A Different World, the spin-off
of his No. 1-rated sitcom, The Cosby Show. "He wanted someone who knows
cinematography and production and comes from a black university," Allen
says. "Someone who can bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to the
show." Not to mention confidence.
Allen, 38,
replaces producer Anne Beatts, 40, who quit last March at the end of World's
first season. Tabloid headlines blared that Beatts and the cast, particularly
Lisa Bonet (a/k/a Denise Huxtable, around whose college experience the show
revolved), were at war. "I can't talk about those problems, because I
wasn't there," Allen says. "But I think there was a major lack of
communication with other people in the cast as well. Lisa shouldn't carry the responsibility
[for the feuds] alone. She has needed someone, a woman especially, whom she can
respect, to help guide her."
Allen's
personal approach has created a different world on the series' set. Last year,
says Guy, 24, who plays Bonet's Southern debutante roommate, "we didn't
have much input. Basically it was 'Do as you're told because we know what's
best.' We trust Debbie. It's not a battle of egos with her." Allen
agrees—almost. "I'm a pussycat," she says, "with big
claws."
She is not, in
other words, a pushover. Raised in Houston, the daughter of a dentist and an
artist who divorced when she was 4, Allen dreamed of becoming a ballerina and
took up to 10 classes a week. She went on to study Greek at Howard University
in Washington, D.C., and in 1972 joined her sister, Phylicia Rashad, 39,
Cosby's TV wife, in New York. Allen won a Drama Desk Award and a Tony
nomination in 1980 for her performance as the lead, Anita, in a Broadway
revival of West Side Story and that same year landed the role of the demanding
dance teacher in the film Fame. In 1982 she began a six-year reprise of the
part for TV. She directed 11 episodes of the show and won two Emmys for her
choreography. When Cosby tried to hire Allen for the premiere season of A
Different World, she turned him down. No time. She had just finished starring
in Broadway's Sweet Charity and was off to London to choreograph the musical of
Stephen King's Carrie. The show opened in New York to a scathing review in the
New York Times. "That wasn't a critique," says Allen, "that was
a blowtorch." After the show closed, Cosby repeated his offer. "My
agent said the producers wanted to have a meeting. I said 'About what?' Tell
them to make me an offer and let's go to work."
Allen did,
diving into the hornet's nest of A Different World, which, though second in the
ratings, was reviled by critics, split by internal bickering and abuzz with
rumors (Was Bonet pregnant? Would she return to the series that spawned her,
The Cosby Show? Would A Different World die?). The answers: yes, yes and no.
Bonet, aided by strategically placed scenery to hide her pregnancy, will
continue on Cosby until the end of November and is expected to return to World
soon after her baby, due late this month, is born.
Meanwhile,
Allen is updating World. "The stories they did last year—I mean the show
could have been in high school," she says. "They did an episode about
an egg. The show's about college students—there has to be some social
significance. We will not be doing any shows about eggs."
Allen's
feisty, sunnyside-up disposition is coddled by a stable home life. She lives in
an airy house with Brobdingnagian furniture in Santa Monica, Calif., with her
husband of four years, Norman Nixon, 32, an L.A. Clippers guard. "The
chairs are for my husband's long-legged friends," she explains to a
visitor seated at the dining room table whose feet don't touch the floor. The
couple met in 1978 when he played himself and she was cast as a cheerleader in
The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh.
Up at 6, home
between 5 and midnight, Allen saves weekends for her family. "I have
everything I need here," she says. "I never have to leave. Last
weekend I was sitting in the pool drinking champagne."
The 5'2"
medley of talent has a lot to toast this fall: the new series; an ABC TV
special she directed and starred in featuring Whoopi Goldberg and Richard
Pryor; and a debut album due out in January. To get ready for the inevitable
scrutiny of the public spotlight, Allen spends an hour a day in her home
exercise studio. "I've got to keep it all hot, honey," she says with
a laugh, "so when Eddie Murphy calls, I'll be a real woman, not a fat
executive."
—John Stark,
and Mike Alexander in Santa Monica
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