Raven Goodwin is definitely in her season to shine.
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The actress is currently starring in the new BET+ holiday film Style Me For Christmas after a plum role as Merritt Tryon alongside Niecy Nash and Courtney B. Vance in Ryan Murphy’s hit series Grotesquerie. BOSSIP Sr. Content Director spoke with Goo!dwin this week to discuss both projects.
Style Me For Christmas stars Mario as Tedee Maxwell, a charming and handsome R&B singer whose known for his playboy lifestyle and lustful love songs, but his cold-hearted ways have hurt both his career and personal life. With pressure mounting from his audience to mature, his manager, Sarah, devises a plan to fix his image by faking a relationship with Raven Goodwin’s character Tiffany Ford, an unsuspecting stylist. Tiffany, a plus-sized fashion designer struggling to save her late mother’s boutique, has sacrificed everything to keep the business afloat while dreaming of launching her own line. Her outspoken best friend Ray’ah Jenkins played by Pretty Vee, supports her fashion dreams and pushes Tiffany to step out of her mother’s shadow and create her own designs. When Tedee and Tiffany’s fake relationship begins to blur the lines between business and love, things get complicated. A boutique owner facing eviction at Christmas gets the fashion assignment of a lifetime when she’s chosen to style a handsome celebrity who’s a playboy.
“I’m definitely excited,” Goodwin said about this week’s release of Style Me For Christmas. “We had a good time filming. We filmed right here in Atlanta. Mario and [Pretty] Vee and Sincerely [Ward] and we had a great director Laz [LazRael Libon]. It was a cute time.”
While audiences may be accustomed to Pretty Vee serving up comedy online and in film and tv projects, Goodwin revealed her character will also bring a funnier side because she’s embracing laughter when and wherever she can.
“I think with my character, Tiffany, she’s going through a lot, but I feel like with her going through what she’s going through, finding the comedic relief and finding joy under the circumstances, it’s kind of where the comedy lies, but it’s definitely unintentionally funny.”
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‘Tis definitely the season to be jolly and Goodwin told us she enjoys acting in and watching holiday films because they are exactly the kind of projects that are fun for the whole family to partake.
“I like watching Christmas movies because I like doing projects that my daughter and my niece and nephews can enjoy,” Goodwin told BOSSIP. “I feel like watching me during the holiday season is kind of cool for the kids and unforgettable and it’ll be a lot of memories like that.”
Since Goodwin’s character Tiffany gets very close and personal with Mario, we had to ask her about getting up close and personal with the R&B singer/actor.
“As far as working with Mario, to work opposite him, especially as a love interest was kind of crazy because when Mario hit the scene I was a little girl living in DC,” Goodwin recalled. “Mario’s from Baltimore so when we heard his music on the radio it was everything to us, like when ‘Braid My Hair’ came out he was that guy! It’s like full circle when you work with people that you looked at as kind of iconic your whole life and Mario was just one of those people, especially in the DMV, so it was it was pretty special and like full circle working with him. I don’t know if he knows that but, I have my moments like, ‘This is really crazy.’ Like we were really like poster-up-on-the-wall and now I’m your coworker so this is always pretty cool wehn I have those moments.”
If it sounds like manifestation to you guys — Raven would not disagree.
“Totally, totally, totally, Mario, Courtney Vance I manifested working with them,” Goodwin agreed. “It’s always a manifestation and it always feels full circle.”
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Speaking of Vance, the actor portrayed Marshall Tryon, father to Goodwin’s character Merritt in Grotesquerie and we’ll just say the family, which includes Niecy Nash as Merritt’s mom Lois, is extremely dysfunctional. Lois is an alcoholic with boundary issues (she has an affair with her son-in-law) and Marshall is dealing with a sex addiction. Meanwhile Merritt is a binge eater who gained 100 pounds in one year.
“To tell the story of the Tryons it felt truthful,” Goodwin said. “You know, family struggle, and it’s funny because this family of high intelligence, you know, Marshall, being a philosopher and Merritg being a doctor and Lois being a detective I feel like that their intelligence is actually their downfall and sometimes when you know too much it affects you in a way that isn’t really aligned with how you should move throughout the world because you do known things and it can make you angry. I feel like that’s the place that they’re in, especially with the state of the world. They’re just trying to figure out what it looks like to be happy and they’re finding it in different vices, sex, food, and alcohol. It’s just truthful being a part of the Tryon family and portraying that. I feel like everyone struggles and everyone has a vice.”
Fans of Grotesquerie follow the family’s movements throughout a season that is divided by Lois’ state of consciousness. For the first half of the series, Lois is unconscious but experiencing an extremely realistic dream state where Merritt isn’t a doctor, but instead is fixated on gaining more weight so she can qualify for a reality show about morbidly obese people.
“I think what we fail to realize is even though Merritt is a doctor that doesn’t means that she’s still not fixated on food,” Goodwin said about the thread between the versions of Merritt she plays. “I think that the underlying thing with people who are you know on the plus side, or obese is somewhere there’s an issue with food, somewhere there’s a struggle with food that’s the thing you can see it on us. So it’s not that she doesn’t struggle with food .I think she still struggles with food. I just don’t think that that is what defines her. I feel like that’s a part of her life just that she’s a doctor, she’s somebody who struggles with food but she’s high functioning. Versus the other Merritt who is low functioning, but she is still intelligent as well which they played into with the Jeopardy and you know her mom mentioning her SAT scores when she’s auditioning for the reality show there’s still a sense of intelligence. She’s just not putting it to use as real Merrit has but the food addiction I think it’s still there. I don’t think that changes that’s my interpretation.”
Like many other fans of Ryan Murphy’s works and Grotesquerie in particular, Goodwin says she enjoyed watching the show as an audience member as well as a participant.
“Oh my God, first of all, I loved it cinematically,” Goodwin told BOSSIP. “I’m like obsessed with what the cinematographers, the DP, and the directors all of them — Max, Ryan, Elegance, Alexa, what they came up with as a collective. It was very cohesive this season. It looks like one person directed all of it, which is what I love but at the same time if you know, you know, so it was really cool just to see all of their perspectives on what the show is. But I just thought it was beautiful over everything. I just thought it was so beautifully shot and then storyline wise. I love the dynamic between I love Nurse Red and I live for Nurse Red. I live for her dialogue, I feel like she has some of the best dialogue on the show and then I love the dynamic between Sister Megan and Lois. I think that that’s the coolest dynamic, the fight scene between them, when she’s returning to the real world. I think that was just really dope the way they did that.”
Since we talked about manifesting scene partners, it seemed only right to end our conversation with Goodwin by asking which future roles and collaborators she’s drawing in next.
“I love what Lee Daniel just did with The Deliverance,” Goodwin told BOSSIP. ” I love that. I’m always down. I love Tyler Perry and what he just did with the show Beauty in Black. So I’m always down for that. I love Spielberg. I love Spike Lee. I’m open. There’s so many people in the industry that I love. I would definitely work with Kerry Washington again. She was one of my favorite directors ever. Regina King is an amazing director. If any of those people call, I’ll answer.”
As for the role of her dreams, Goodwin revealed she is pinned to play Gone With The Wind Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel.
“My intention is to be Hattie McDaniel, of course I’m pinned to play her,” Goodwin told BOSSIP. I’ve been pinned to play her since 2019. So I cannot wait to get her story told. I feel like the time is coming. I don’t feel like it’s quite here yet, for some reason. When it does get done and I think it’s gonna be really special.”
It turns out that McDaniel held a space beyond Hollywood as a community builder, which is another role Goodwin seeks to hold in the near future.
“Hattie used to put on these salons where everybody from the industry who was influential who wanted to make a wave in the business, would come to to talk and for companionship, and just to be amongst the community,” Goodwin added. “I look forward to creating and curating events like that. I love to cook. I love to entertain, so that’s something that I’ve been thinking about long-term is getting cookware and cookbooks out there and hosting salons and really taking it back to a sense of community especially in our industry because so many people are divided and so far apart, and so my goal is to bring people together.”
You can watch Raven Goodwin in Style Me For Christmas on BET+ now and in Grotesquerie, which is streaming on Hulu