Tracee Ellis Ross, Regina King & Alfre Woodard Lead 'Golden Girls' Cast for One Night Only
On Tuesday, September 8, "The Golden Girls" will be re-imagined by an all-Black cast for a one-night-only charity event on Zoom, CNN reports.
Actresses Alfre Woodard (HBO's "True Blood"), Tracee Ellis Ross (ABC's "Black-ish"), Sanaa Lathan ("Love and Basketball"), and Regina King (HBO's "Watchmen") will star. In her post to Instagram, which flashes back and forth between the original cast, it appears as though Ross will play Rose Nylund, the role originally made famous by Betty White; while Lathan takes on Rue McClanahan's saucy and salacious Blanche Devereaux, King as Bea Arthur's salty Dorothy Zbornak, and Woodard as Estelle Getty's wise-cracking matriarch Sophia Petrillo.
"The Golden Girls" ran for seven seasons on NBC, between 1985-1992, and was one of the network's more popular shows of the era. The premise of the show centered on four older women with distinct personalities sharing a home together in Miami. The series was also progressive in its handling of storylines pertaining to coming out, same-sex marriage, and HIV/AIDS, the latter of which was praise for its sensitivity — particularly when, at that time, the LGBTQ community was specifically scapegoated for that pandemic by two successive US Presidents, Reagan and Bush, and their Evangelical supporters.
The sign-up page for the Zoom event describes the watch-party:
In an effort to further engage our community and drive change, all you need to do to enjoy this evening is sign up to receive messages about how you can make a change during this election!
This event is in partnership with Zoom, and the first episode is spotlighting and supporting Color of Change — the nation's largest online racial justice organization.
"The Golden Girls" Zoom event takes place between 9-10pm Tuesday, September 8. Sign up here to watch.