Entertainment Extra

2 ENTERTAINMENT EXTRA By Sarah Passingham TV Media S o many lost or forgotten chap- ters 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 begins 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 sub- ject of "The Porter," the series details the lives of Pullman por- ters 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 deliver- ing food and drinks to passen- gers, shining shoes and keeping the cars clean. Women, mean- while, were hired as maids to wait on female passengers' needs, such as manicures, wash- ing, mending clothes and child care. Porters and maids were responsible for giving middle- class passengers the experience of being waited on like the wealthy. As a tough job with tre- mendously long hours and very little pay, porters were also sub- jected to discrimination on the job from passengers and their employers. A demeaning practice across many Pullman cars was calling porters "George," regard- less of their actual names, effec- tively referring to them as an extension of George Pullman himself. After the founding of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, wages and working con- ditions slowly improved until the Pullman Company folded in 1969. Ronnie Rowe Jr. ("Star Trek: Discovery") and Aml Ameen ("I May Destroy You") star as sol- diers-turned-porters Zeke Garrett and Junior Massey, men striving to organize their fellow 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 fac- ing 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) legend- ary actress, Alfre Woodard, as brothel owner Fay. Pulling double duty as series creators and stars of "The Porter" are Arnold Pinnock ("The Listener") and Bruce Ramsay ("19-2"). Set mostly between Montreal'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 con- tributed 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 Underground 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 actors for each part, according to series director Charles Officer. The "Akilla's Escape" (2020) director told Radheyan Simonpillai 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." In that same interview, Thorne also shared the importance of porters in Black communities that were just a few generations removed from slavery by the time they were unionizing in the 1920s. He noted they "were able to utilize that network and spread some of their ideas and learn, and take that information back into their communities" for added benefit. Annmarie Morais ("Killjoys"), Marsha Greene ("Coroner") and Aubrey Nealon ("Snowpiercer") all write for "The Porter," with Morais and Greene also wearing producer hats for the series. Morais shared with NOW Magazine the broader mission behind the show: "The struggles within ourselves, the struggles beyond ourselves and the strug- gles of the world at large." Like a lot of passion projects, "The Porter" has been many years in the making. It started over a decade ago in 2010 when Pinnock and Ramsay began pitching the project as a movie. When it was eventually picked up by CBC as a series, it was soon dropped when addi- tional funding fell through. Through its ever-developing lifetime, Morais and Greene moved from writers to show- runners while original creators resisted suggestions from exec- utives to bring on white show- runners. Schwering Realty 2 x 2" Pear Tree Gallery 3 x 2" On the Cover Aml Ameen as seen in "The Porter" Premiering drama explores founding of world's first Black-led union Chase Center 3 x 2" American Legion Post 60 2 x 3" Thrifty Muffler 2 x 2.5" 230 Burlington Avenue Logansport 574-992-8038 Tired of Shopping Around for THE Right Mechanic? BRAKE SPECIAL $89.95 PER AXLE. FOR MOST CARS AND TRUCKS Give us an opportunity to earn your business! "We do it Better for Less!"

• Cover