“Logo text Mary J. Blige remembers the first time she got positive feedback for her acting. “When I was 7, I did a Christmas play in school, and the word from the other students and teachers was that me and this guy who was also in the play did very, very, very well,” she says.”, — write: www.hollywoodreporter.com
Mary J. Blige remembers the first time she got positive feedback for her acting. “When I was 7, I did a Christmas play in school, and the word from the other students and teachers was that me and this guy who was also in the play did very, very, very well,” she says. “It put something in me like, ‘Okay maybe I can really do this,’ and I always wanted to act [after] getting that feedback. At some point, I kind of left it alone and got into the music business.”
Choosing the music business early in her career has more than worked out for Blige. To date, the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul has sold over 100 million albums worldwide, won nine Grammys and is set to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in October. And she’s not stopping. She just released “Breathing” with rapper Fabolous, the lead single to her 15th studio album coming this fall. The secret ingredient to longevity in the music business, says the Yonkers, New York, native, is her.
“I’ve been taking control of my music for years,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It connects with my fans so well, because I’m not doing anything that anyone else is telling me to do or that anyone else is doing. It just feels good to have my own identity, and I’ve had it for years. To not be afraid, to not chase and not run after what everybody else is doing, but to just be my authentic self feels amazing.”
Becoming Mary J. Blige the legendary singer, it turns out, was good for her acting career. She got the bug back after doing The Jamie Foxx Show in 1998, mixing singing and acting on the episode “Papa Don’t Preach,” also starring Ron Isley. “I played a character by the name of Ola Mae and the word was that I did great,” she says. “People were blown away by my performance. And I was like, ‘okay, I guess I could do this.’ And then things like Strong Medicine came, and Ghost Whisperer and all types of other stuff. Everybody just started showing up with [projects], so I kept doing it and practicing.”
That practice paid off big time back in 2018 when she received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress as Florence Jackson in director Dee Rees’ heart-wrenching historical drama Mudbound opposite Rob Morgan and Carey Mulligan, along with another nomination for best original song for “The Mighty River,” which she co-wrote and sang. The double nomination was the first-ever two-time nomination in a single year in Oscar history.
But Blige never rests on her laurels and continues to put in the work. That was most evident back in 2020 when Power Book II: Ghost, the first spinoff of friend and fellow music artist Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson’s successful urban drama Power, also featuring longtime friend Clifford “Method Man” Smith, Jr., premiered. The series’ success has made Power a true franchise and a universe all its own. Her role as the ruthless queenpin and matriarch Monet Tejada has inspired many memes and now some fans, new and old, even address her as Monet.
Before the second installment of Ghost’s fourth and final season, which premiered in June, resumed on Sept. 6, she hit the big screen in Rob Peace, a heartbreaking true story written and directed by fellow Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor that shares an interesting parallel with Ghost and Power star Michael Rainey Jr.’s character Tariq. Like that character, real-life Newark native and Yale student Rob Peace also sold drugs on his college campus. Peace’s reasons, however, were much different from the fictional Tariq’s. Instead, they were tied to Peace’s dreams of freeing his father from prison, as well as saving him from a terminal illness and to fund his efforts to uplift his community.
Blige plays Peace’s mother Jackie opposite Tulsa King co-star and Juilliard grad Jay Will whose performance she praises. “This boy was amazing. He was Rob,” she says. “When I showed up as Jackie, he was already all the way into Rob, and he just blew me away.”
Their chemistry was instantaneous. “We connected and clicked,” she recalls. “It just worked.”
Mary J. Blige in Rob Peace. Republic Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
Ejiofor has shared that he cast Blige, who also serves as one of the film’s executive producers, first and that her involvement dating back to pre-pandemic times got the film made. At the time, Blige and Ejiofor — who also plays Peace’s father Skeet and adapted the script from the 2014 New York Times best seller The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs, Peace’s friend and Yale roommate — did not know each other.
“He called my agency and said he wanted Mary J. Blige to play Jackie. And I said, ‘Okay, let me read the script,’ and found out it was a true story. The script was gut-wrenching, sad, but uplifting and optimistic at the same time. It reminded me of my mom and every other mother living in the inner-city raising children.”
Peace’s mom was confident Mary would do her justice. “She was so sweet. She’s a full fan,” the Share My World singer says of her real-life counterpart. “She was just so proud that it was me, because people know my story and she was glad I was able to relate and play her.”
Blige has also found a way to merge her music with film and TV. Last year, she premiered two Lifetime movies — Real Love and Strength of a Woman — themed around two of her popular songs starring BMF faves Ajiona Alexus and Da’Vinchi.
“That was my idea, and the team that I had at the time, to turn some of my songs into movies,” she says. “We have one more, Family Affair, actually coming on Lifetime and it’s the continuation,” she says. “Da’Vinchi and Ajiona, both of them, will be in this.”
Still closing out Ghost, which ends in Oct. 4, just in time for a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction and new album, is “definitely bittersweet,” she says.
“I had a good time. Monet helped me out a lot in my own personal life. She was just therapy for me, because I got into Monet right after that divorce [from Kendu Isaacs in 2018],” she says. “Monet is a true character. She was hot. She was how I was feeling. Monet killing [and] shooting everybody was therapeutic for me.”
New episodes of Power Book II: Ghost air Fridays at 8 p.m. on Starz.