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Debbie Allen has entertained generations of viewers onscreen and mentored just as many behind the scenes.
The actress, dancer, choreographer, director and producer earned her first TV acting credit on Good Times in 1976 and gained widespread notoriety for her role as Lydia Grant on the NBC musical drama Fame, for which she won a Golden Globe Award for best actress, from 1982-1987. One year later, Allen took the reins of The Cosby Show spinoff A Different World, serving as showrunner, producer and director of the sitcom centered on the life of students at a fictional historically Black college in Virginia for its second through sixth seasons. Now, after acting in and directing on hit shows like Jane the Virgin, Grey’s Anatomy, Girlfriends, Everybody Hates Chris, That’s So Raven, The Jamie Foxx Show, How to Get Away with Murder and Insecure, Allen has made her way back to the halls of Hillman College as executive producer and director of Netflix’s A Different World sequel series.
“It’s not for me, it’s for the world — keeping the world safe because we’re raising human beings that have empathy, they have creativity, they know how to take criticism, and that’s very important that you don’t shrink,” Allen, who describes herself as “the youngest 76-year-old on the planet,” tells The Hollywood Reporter of reviving the sitcom and her commitment to engaging a new cohort of young viewers. “Now it’s very difficult to say almost anything because everybody’s like, ‘They’ll come for you, you can’t say that.’ Chile, say everything.”
Allen’s ethos is apparent in the new show, helmed by Felicia Pride, which sees a new class of freshman hopefuls, led by Maleah Joi Moon’s Deborah Wayne, demand accountability from the leaders of their educational institution, including Deborah’s parents, Hillman’s interim president Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison) and proud board member Whitley Gilbert (Jasmine Guy).
Below, Allen talks with THR about continuing the original series’ legacy of broaching controversial topics— and the battles she faced for doing so; working with Jesse Jackson, Roseanne Barr and Dolly Parton; and why the country needs to hear from young people now more than ever.
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In 2012, you tweeted that you would like to do a reboot of A Different World. What was going on at that time that sparked that desire?
I was looking at other shows getting rebooted, and I knew that what we brought with A Different World was a voice that had never been heard from before and has not since, not like that. We’d never seen a real peep in any kind of way into an HBCU — we had Spike Lee’s School Daze, which was great— but not one that comes into your living room every week. This was a powerful tool in so many ways, as well as great entertainment, so I just knew that it was time for us to go again because there was no Barack Obama when we did the first show. Jesse Jackson, I called him and got him to do an episode — I’m still calling up everybody that we knew — but Jesse was a viable presidential candidate at the time. I also invited George Bush, but he didn’t say anything.
If you get outside of America, you see how great our influence is, how much we inspire change in countries and in communities all over the world, especially women. I’ve spent a lot of time in the Middle East as part of my work with the Kennedy Center for many, many years. It was like lightning in a bottle to be in a room with me, a woman who was in charge, had a whole big production, telling everybody what to do, suggesting this, saying no to that. We live in a very, very interesting crossroads in the world, and there’s a responsibility that comes with that. And we owned up to it so great when we did that first round, and here we go again. And if there’s ever a time to hear from the young people in a nation, this is the time right now. We need to hear less from the Supreme Court, Senate and House. What are the young people feeling? What is this world they’re inheriting?
The original show was known for exploring groundbreaking topics. Was there any storyline in season one of the sequel that you were particularly proud of telling?
In the very first episode, we’re dealing with financial health at HBCU institutions. That is huge all over this country, and not just at HBCUs, but colleges everywhere. There’s such a slash in government funding and what you can do, and people want to tell you how to teach, what books you can read, what you can’t, all of that. There’s a great episode called “Coming to America” where our African student’s parents come and they find him in a different world than what they expected. There’s an episode where there’s a bomb threat on the campus — why should that even happen? And in between all of that, there’s a lot of romance, heartbreak, a lot of laughter and wonderful young characters that I think the world is going to love.
Today there’s universal reverence for the show. Did you feel that in real time? Was the impact and influence of the show immediate to you?
Honestly, we were so busy working. I was so busy trying to help get it right. I had to fight a lot of battles. There were a couple of people there that needed to step aside and let communication and openness happen. There was a battle sometimes with the network about the stories that we were telling, like when we satirized the presidential campaign and we made [the candidates] all women. It was so funny. [But] we were getting called on the carpet while other shows were getting on the cover of Time magazine. When we did the AIDS episode, you would’ve thought we put Jesus back on the cross. All we were trying to do was educate people and save lives. I took a lot of heat a lot of times — everybody did — but that was my job, and I’d do it again.
Was the show ever under the threat of cancellation because of these episodes?
We had advertisers pull out sometimes, but we stood our ground. We were a force. I have to honestly say, Mr. Cosby said, “Get on this ship and sail,” and we did, and he supported it, and he winded our back when we needed help.
How did you get Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold on board for the L.A. riots episode in season six?
We came under fire for doing that episode. It was the best season opener. We got great reviews ultimately, but the network was giving us notes: “How can you have white looters?” What are you talking about? You think only Black and Latin people are out here taking stuff? So they were not going to show that scene, blah, blah, blah. And then Marcy Carsey was talking with us, and I think Susan Fales-Hill [the lead writer and producer] said, “Well, why don’t we get Roseanne?” And Marcy Carsey, because that was her show as well, called them, and they said, “Yeah, we’ll come over there.” So we built a new set, and Roseanne and Tom came and played the white looters. And you know what was great? I did it in two takes, and they went, “Debbie, are you finished? Did we get it?” I said, “Yeah, we got it.” They said, “Well, you need to come direct our show, honey, because we like this pace.” It was a big hit.
Is your pace still like that now as a director?
They know: don’t come on my set without knowing your words. Be ready to rock and roll because there’s no remake of the robe anywhere in television. Time is your biggest enemy, and it battles with your creativity because you want to do this, that and the other. You have to know where you need to spend the time and get those close-ups that go into somebody’s eyeball — I’m talking about Grey’s Anatomy now. But yeah, I changed the whole culture there in many ways because Friday night was always our tape night. They were going until midnight and one o’clock in the morning. I said, “Oh, hell no.” We were a well-oiled machine. We rehearsed really strongly, and when we hit something — that was when there was a ring-down phone; writers in the network were in a different place watching, and the minute those cameras moved, we were going on to the next set. So I would count to maybe 10. If it didn’t ring down, I said, “Okay, moving on.” I feel like Felicia Pride is that way too, because, honey, she writes those outlines and she wants your notes the next day. I feel like I’m back at school.
The hashtag #Emmyssowhite was trending recently after there were no winners of color in the acting categories this year. A Different World never got any Emmy nominations throughout its six seasons. Did that bother you?
I learned a long time ago you can’t do anything for an award. You cannot let that even get in your eye line. You’ve got to do the work, and what comes comes. It may take time. But we were all wondering, Sally Richardson [Whitfield]? Nominated twice in the same category [for directing], and what? I wanted to go get my Oscar and give it to her. (Laughs.) It’s like, what are we talking about here? Sally is amazing. She does the work. I’ve seen her on the set because my sister is in [The Gilded Age]. Ooh, she’s so evil, isn’t she?
Her character is something else.
I love it. It’s so different from Phylicia [Rashad], too. It’s so good for her. So you have to do the work for the work. I learned this so early on, even with reviews, you’ve got to feel good about what you’re doing. If the impressionist painters listened to the world, they wouldn’t have painted any of it. They were called heretics, blasphemers — how dare they? So you have to be a creative person who believes in yourself and the people you’re working with and what you’re doing.
How do you feel about the real-time feedback creators get now in the social media age?
Maybe because of who I am, no one says anything too bad about me. I remember I went to the Kennedy Center [after Donald Trump became chairman last February]. I’ve been a part of the artists in residence at the Kennedy Center for almost 25 years and done so many productions there. They were doing what they do every two years, a festival that celebrates a culture or whatever it is — they’ve done Arabesque, they’ve done China; I was a part of all of that — and they were doing space. My mother, Vivian Ayers, wrote a book called Hawk in 1957 about man’s transcendence into a higher level of existence, which was this person going out into space, kind of coming into one with the sun and becoming a new being.
So I created this beautiful eight-minute ballet and people said, “You’re going to go?” I said, “Yes, I’m going to go because that’s my house too.” And I was told not to go, but I did go. My mom was one of the women of Hidden Figures, so we were going to screen the movie. So I just kept waiting. I said, “Okay, let’s see what happens.” And you know what? No one called to cancel it. No one called to say anything. We had a sold-out performance, sold-out luncheon. And I don’t know what’s going to happen now, but you have to believe in the power of the arts to make people feel and think and, maybe, change. That’s the world I’ve lived in my whole life.
Do you have any hopes for the future of the Kennedy Center?
Yes, I have hopes. We just need time so we can restore. I’ve seen houses falling down. This one is not falling down. It’s been broken, but it can be put back together, and it should. This is our crown jewel performing arts center of America. The whole world has come there. The whole world helped build it, and we can’t ignore that. It can’t be about anybody. It has to be about us as a nation. We have to come together. That’s the hope.
You won two Emmys for your work on Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square. Can you talk about working with her on that movie?
Dolly Parton was a dream come true to work with. She was not just sweet; she was so open and collaborative. She’s a brilliant songwriter and composer. When I was working with Dolly — and thank you, Sam Haskell, for that job — she wrote a song, and I’d cast Jenifer Lewis in a part and said, “Dolly, you wrote this song very country and Western, and now that we’ve cast the part with Jenifer, a Black woman, could we make it a little more…?” [She said] “Yes, Debbie. What do you want me to do?” I’d ask her something, the next day it would be done. And then on the lunch break, she would sit there and sign all the extra autographs. She took time with my granddaughter; she bought me ice cream.
Dolly was just a joy, and she never complained. The only time she complained was because she was playing a homeless person, and she said, “Debbie, do I have to put dirt on my face?” I said, “Come on, Dolly.” It was such a big, heartbreaking loss to lose her, and she’d not been sharing the real status of her health with so many of us, but that’s her own personal life, as it should be, and she’s given us all so much. I love the comments all over the world. We disagree about everything, but everybody loved Dolly Parton.
If there were another show from your catalog that you could reboot, what would it be?
Fame. We’re ready.
Are you talking about it? Is anything in development?
They tried it [with the 2009 movie] so I don’t know. They better call me because I know what to do.
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A Different World is now streaming on Netflix.
English (US) ·