The cast, creator, and a network executive talk to BuzzFeed News about their revolutionary series about a perfectly imperfect single black woman.
Gabrielle Union as Mary Jane Paul on BET's Being Mary Jane.
Daniel Mcfadden / Via BET
Four years ago, BET's massively popular scripted series Being Mary Jane wasn't even something creator Mara Brock Akil was ready to talk about out loud.
"I wasn't sure anybody was ready for it," she told BuzzFeed News, sitting at her home near Venice Beach. "It was a black female lead, [and I didn't want to] populate it with a bunch of white characters to help swallow the life of a black woman. It was going to be about her life, and it was going to have the four quadrants of her life: her love life, her work life, her family life, and her alone moments. If she's single, she's going to be alone sometimes and we need to see that. I was protective."
It was a story she couldn't trust just anyone with, but eventually, her husband, director Salim Akil, convinced her to share the details of her project with BET, where the couple had a longstanding, record-breaking history.
The network had picked up their show The Game — which The CW unceremoniously had canceled in 2009 — in syndication. And it wasn't long before executives at BET noticed that the viewership for reruns of the series, which chronicled the off-the-field lives of a professional football team and the women who love them, was at times bigger than that of its original airings on The CW. In 2011, after a long social media campaign from crushed fans, BET struck a deal to bring The Game back with new episodes, making it the network's first scripted show.
"Everybody just knew we were about to fuck it up," Brock Akil told BuzzFeed News. "Everybody was the same, and they were nice: Look, it won't be you guys … but BET has never done it before."
That experiment turned out to be a goldmine for the network: The Game brought in a record-breaking 7.7 million viewers for its Season 4 premiere. In October, the series was renewed for an impressive ninth and final season.
BET's success with the Akils opened the door for the network to take a chance on another scripted series: Brock Akil's passion project, Being Mary Jane. And the results of that risk have also been incredibly rewarding: The series premiered to more than 4 million viewers in January 2013, a number no episode of Mad Men has yet reached.
Mary Jane Paul, minus her weave.
Daniel Mcfadden / Via BET
With Being Mary Jane, the network has given Brock Akil creative freedom without asking her to compromise the level of authenticity that makes the show so relatable, it's often uncomfortable to watch. Each hour-long episode peels the layers back on a beautifully imperfect woman who is struggling to get her real life as in order as the one she projects on camera for her midday cable news talk show.
In its current second season, for example, Mary Jane Paul (Gabrielle Union) — who was inspired by once-aspiring journalist Brock Akil herself — jumped at the chance to get her eggs frozen gratis, in exchange for broadcasting her story on her cable network. In a recent episode, she looked over at her doctor after realizing the fertility treatments to freeze her eggs had gone horribly wrong…on live TV. Her lip quivered, and she immediately tried to rid her face of sheer panic, get it together, and prepare to kick it back to the folks back at the studio. But she couldn't — not before she asked the doctor these questions, dripping in desperation: What went wrong? Could I have taken my medications wrong? You said 38 isn't old, old!
Though the exact experience might not universally translate, Mary Jane's vulnerability — and subsequent anger and embarrassment — certainly resonated with audience. Social media erupted with reactions to the decisions the character had made, leading to the kind of conversation the show has regularly launched, ranging from topics like infertility to black men and suicide. And there were strong-arm conversations of her next, decidedly dumb move: aiming to get knocked up by her former lover, who was already expecting a baby by another woman (and whose sperm she stole and froze in the 2013 pilot).
Even Union is "sometimes uncomfortable" with Mary Jane's choices, but like the legions of fans Being Mary Jane has amassed, she's happy to debate the imperfect life of a woman who appears to have everything all figured out. "I'm like, Ooh. I wouldn't like her! I wouldn't be friends with her!" Union told BuzzFeed News via phone. "But … if I can have compassion for myself and for my loved ones who haven't always made the best decisions, for sure I can have compassion and empathy for my character."
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