Too often London is framed as the Black girl nextdoor – in the music video for Pharrell and Jay-Z’s Frontin’ or on the cult soap The Game, for example.ĭavid Duchovny as Arnold, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Shelley, Jonah Hill as Ezra, Lauren London as Amira, Eddie Murphy as Akbar, and Nia Long as Fatima in You People. Throw in the hip-hop-inspired fashion sense, the Black best friend (Sam Jay) and rapier wit, and Ezra starts looking quite like the kind of swaggy white ally you see all around Los Angeles – the guy who quotes Drake without irony, dominates pickup basketball games in Inglewood and cruises Melrose sneaker shops in a tie-dye tracksuit, walking on the sidewalk street side of his boo.īarris and Hill do the work of setting up Ezra and Amira’s romance – Amira outright says she wants a man who’ll be totally straight with her, while Ezra’s own path to reconciling his anxious relationships and life choices begins with him totally relaxing with her. Hill slathered those dollops of his real-life charisma on to Ezra, a successful broker with a deep curiosity for Black culture and politics and thirst for authenticity – the latter clearly a byproduct of Hill’s real-life hothouse sessions with Dr Phil Stutz.Įzra’s proposal speech in particular felt like a declaration you’d expect from someone who had read The Five Love Languages. He’s a rich and famous Academy Award nominee who runs with Leo DiCaprio, a renowned yachtsman. Never mind that he’s slimmed down, slicked his hair back and stuck on a body load of tattoos. He isn’t the same pudgy geek who made his leading man debut opposite Michael Cera in Superbad. My colleague Lauren Mechling launched our takedown fest by pronouncing Hill and London’s connection “a romance without a beating heart”.įirst, the idea that Hill couldn’t actually woo London is absurd to me audiences seemingly can’t grasp that. The Guardian gave it two two-star reviews. The Daily Beast roasted it for furthering Barris’s “ obnoxious racial agenda”. London is (checks notes) acting.īut it wasn’t just Black audiences piling on negative feedback. The idea that she could rebound with a guy like Hill was so beyond the pale. In a recent interview, London said she’d only “just started” to heal from that immense loss. Jonah Hill as Ezra and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Shelley in You People. Hill and London’s first scene together is punctuated by Hussle’s 2018 hit Last Time That I Checc’d. The mental block comes down to London having been in a relationship with the rap legend Nipsey Hussle that ended with his tragic shooting death in 2019. But I found him believable as he cracked wise about his kids having light skin and freaked out about his kufi hat, gifted from Louis Farrakhan, catching fire, I was right there with him, in stitches the whole time.īy far the most searing skepticism was reserved for the relationship between Hill and London, with many flat-out recoiling that they could be romantically linked. Any excitement over the leading lady casting of Lauren London quickly gave way to grumbling about Nia Long being far too young and fine to play her mother.Īfter its release, audiences also had a hard time believing Eddie Murphy as a militant Black father and husband who sees racism in everything. You People was dismissed by Black Twitter early on, starting when it was first announced in summer 2021 as yet another manifestation of Barris’s obsession with his own mixed-race heritage.
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