As a 12-year-old, I somehow convinced my Dad to take me to see Set It Off. “Wait, how old are you?!” She exclaims on the zoom call. I think she got scared that maybe I was a bit too young to see the film. She would be right. While I enjoyed the movie, I was way too young to understand what I was watching. One thing I did know when watching was that Vivica A. Fox was a star.
This got me thinking about her career and her personal perspective on being an actress, and how she goes about crafting intentionally in her performances. This let me down a bit of a rabbit hole uncovering her career and how we got to this point. Excuse my while I wax on about an amazing, long lasting career before getting to the interview, but hear me out!
When you look at the trajectory of her career, you’ll see staying power. When you look at the full range of her career she really has done it all. She had a stretch where she frequently appeared in various soap operas including Days Of Our Lives, and primetime television’s Out All Night. Fox had a notable role in Independence Day (1996), where she starred alongside Will Smith, but it wasn’t until Set It Off that people really took notice of her skill as an actress.
In Set It Off, directed by F. Gary Gray, Fox played Frankie, the emotionally grounded leader of four Black women pushed to the brink by poverty, racism, and policing, who turn to bank robbery for a way out of their circumstances. Acting opposite Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, and Kimberly Elise. Fox brought gravitas to her performance making it one of the most memorable performances of 1996. Now, If Set It Off established Fox as a dramatic star, Kill Bill: Volume 1 reinvented her as a genre icon.
Cast by Quentin Tarantino as assassin Vernita (Copperhead) Green, Fox opened the film’s emotional and physical stakes in the freakin’ iconic kitchen fight against Uma Thurman’s Beatrix “The Bride.” Kiddo. While only in Vol. 1 for seven minutes, she put in the work to master the authenticity of the role which required months of martial arts and stunt work. Props to Fox for doing most of her own action work, showing she has the range to go from dramatic actress, to action star. But she didn’t stop here. Fox went from actress to creative stakeholder through her partnership with the Lifetime network.
Her relationship with Lifetime began with the drama series 1-800-Missing. The show centered on FBI cases involving missing persons. The actress also served as a co-executive producer from 2003–2006. She wasn’t only appearing onscreen anymore, but was beginning to influence the work structurally and this is how the “Wrong” movies came about. Fox became synonymous with the long-running The Wrong franchise. A campy, thriller-heavy series of television movies she stars and executive produces, including titles like The Wrong Roommate, The Wrong Student, The Wrong Cheerleader, The Wrong Valentine and a bunch more. Since 2016, nearly 40 films have been produced in the franchise. They all end with the same line delivered from Fox, “You messed with the wrong (insert title of movie here)”. With a career as strong as Fox’s, it’s no wonder writer/director Alesha Harris reached out for her to play God in her revenge-thriller Is God Is as her screen history deepens the role itself.
The Amazon/MGM production released May 15, and has an all-star cast including Kara Young, Mallory Johnson, Janelle Monae, Erika Alexander, Josiah Cross, Vivica Fox, and Sterling K. Brown. Fox plays a scarred, bedridden mother known to her children and handlers as “God” after surviving being horribly burned. In a way, Is God Is feels like a culmination of Set It Off’s righteous anger, and Kill Bill’s mythic vengeance. In our interview, she talks about her agent getting a call about the movie and finding out that it was produced by Tessa Thompson. This got her hyped for it but once she read the script and knew the role, she had to get involved. “Alesha got on the call and got right to it.” she mentions. “ She said this film I’m making is inspired by Tarantino-style filmmaking, and you are my only choice to play GOD.”
Check out the rest of my interview with Vivica A. Fox via audio below, as we talk about Is God Is, her career, and how to create staying power in a shifting industry.
FOR THE INTERVIEW WITH VIVICA A. FOX, LISTEN HERE:
