Entertainment NOW

2 • February 20 - 26, 2022 Entertainment Now By Sarah Passingham TV Media S o many lost or forgotten chapters of history tell the stories behind the everyday functions of society. One such lesser-told chronicle is that of the world's first Black-led union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, founded in 1925. A new, joint CBC/BET+ drama series be- gins exploring the foundation of that union when "The Porter" premieres Monday, Feb. 21, on BET+. For those who may need a quick history lesson on the subject of "The Porter," the series details the lives of Pullman porters in the 1920s. Porters were Canadian and American railway attendants hired to work on sleeper cars. George Pullman, the founder of the Pullman Company, only hired Black men as porters, and their duties included delivering food and drinks to passengers, shin- ing shoes and keeping the cars clean. Women, meanwhile, were hired as maids to wait on female passengers' needs, such as mani- cures, washing, mending clothes and child care. Porters and maids were re- sponsible for giving middle-class passengers the experience of being waited on like the wealthy. As a tough job with tremendously long hours and very little pay, porters were also subjected to discrimination on the job from passengers and their employers. A demeaning practice across many Pullman cars was calling porters "George," regardless of their ac- tual names, effectively referring to them as an extension of George Pullman himself. After the founding of the Broth- erhood of Sleeping Car Porters, wages and working conditions slowly improved until the Pullman Company folded in 1969. Ronnie Rowe Jr. ("Star Trek: Discovery") and Aml Ameen ("I May Destroy You") star as soldiers-turned-porters Zeke Garrett and Junior Massey, men striving to organize their fel- low railway attendants. Mouna Traoré ("Murdoch Mysteries") is Marlene Massey, Junior's wife and a singer in Montreal's Little Burgundy jazz scene, while Loren Lott ("The Young and the Restless") plays Lucy Conrad, an aspiring singer trying to break into Marlene's scene despite facing racism and colorism every step of the way. Rounding out the cast are Stephanie Sy ("Nobody" 2021), Adrian Walters ("In the Dark") and "Crooklyn's" (1994) legendary actress, Alfre Woodard, as brothel owner Fay. Pulling double duty as series creators and stars of "The Por- ter" are Arnold Pinnock ("The Listener") and Bruce Ramsay ("19-2"). Set mostly between Montre- al's St. Antoine neighborhood (known at the time as "The Harlem of the North"), Chicago and Detroit, "The Porter" brings together stories from both sides of the border, each of which contributed to the formation of the union. A series description from CBC's website boasts that the characters of "The Porter" are, "young, gifted and Black, from Canada, the Caribbean, and the U.S. via the Under- ground Railroad and through the Great Migration." While the cast of characters in "The Porter" may come from diverse backgrounds, it was not difficult to find the perfect ac- tors for each part, according to series director Charles Officer. The "Akilla's Escape" (2020) director told Radheyan Simonpil- lai for NOW Magazine that in order to find their cast, he and fellow series director R.T. Thorne ("Utopia Falls") simply travelled across Canada, noting, "there's unbelievable talent here." Officer went on to say that "anyone who is looking for Black actors and saying they can't find somebody, well, here you have it." Cover Story Aml Ameen as seen in "The Porter" Band together: Premiering drama explores founding of world's first Black-led union Ready Rental 3 x 4 Hayley Siefert 3 x 2 Letters & Numbers Sudoku Fill in the grid so that every row,every column, and every 4x4 box contains the digits 1 through 9 AND the letters A-F. Solution on page 12.

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