A meeting through a mutual friend at a barbecue led to director Angel Kristi Williams and novelist Felicia Pride creating the Netflix show Really Love. Pride told Williams she was looking for a director for her first screenplay, which she pitched as a cross between Love Jones meet Blue Valentine set in D.C.
“She shared the script with me and we decided to start collaborating almost immediately,” explains Williams. “I read the script and really recognized the characters and the way they spoke because I’m from Baltimore and the story was set in D.C. And she really loved my sensibility for my short film, so we were like ‘let’s make it’ and that really started the journey.”
Really Love, from the Black-owned Macro and Homegrown Pictures, among others, follows the romance between idealistic law student Stevie Richmond and struggling artist Isaiah Maxwell as they carve out space for love while also pursuing their individual passions. Queen Sugar’s Kofi Siriboe and Dutch actress Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing, who some may recall as Ruby from the OWN series Love Is (now streaming on ALLBLK), play Isaiah and Stevie. While Black love, a rare topic for feature films, is the primary focus, Isaiah’s struggles with racism in the art world, as well as his challenges with his relationship with Stevie—coming from two different sides of the economic fence—also weigh in.
Recognizable faces in the cast include Michael Ealy as established artist Yusef who is a mentor to Isaiah; Mack Wilds as Isaiah’s day one childhood ace Nick; Naturi Naughton as Stevie’s cousin Sicily Richmond; Uzo Aduba as Chenai Hungwe who helps guide Isaiah’s career; and Suzzanne Douglas (in her last film) and Blair Underwood as Stevie’s well-to-do parents Anne and Jerome Richmond. Art and music is especially rich in Really Love with the work of Gerald Lovell (which largely serves as Isaiah’s canvas in the film), Chanel Compton, and Ronald Jackson featured alongside the sounds of go-go as well as music by Ari Lennox, Kamasi Washington, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah and many others also found on the Really Love soundtrack.
“When I initially read the script, I was just blown away by the project in itself,” shares Really Love star Wong-Loi-Sing who wasn’t even auditioning for Stevie at the time. “Usually you might get a little too focused on the character that you’re going to audition for, but, in this case, it just was the entire script, the story, the meaningfulness of the project, that got to me at first.”
Even though Wong-Loi-Sing was born in Rotterdam and launched her career in her native Netherlands, she says that she was happy at “just being able to immerse in a story that spoke to me so much.” A lot of Stevie’s experiences are not just unique to the D.C. area or the U.S., she says.
