Adrienne Warren (center) as Mamie Till-Mobley in ABC’s Women of the Movement.
Courtesy of Eli Joshua Ade/ABC
Playing Tina Turner was an “unbelievably difficult, exciting and exhilarating” experience, says Adrienne Warren, who was in the midst of a Broadway run in the starring role of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical when everything came to a halt in March 2020. “Our entire community was in deep mourning,” Warren recalls, not knowing when or if they’d be back onstage.
Amid the uncertainty of that summer came the opportunity to portray Mamie Till-Mobley in the ABC anthology series Women of the Movement. Mamie, an educator and activist, was the mother of Emmett Till, whose lynching in 1955 was a catalyst in the civil rights movement. When the project came to Warren with her name on the shortlist, outrage over anti-Black racism was again roiling the country after the murder of George Floyd.
“There’s a reason why in my life, at this time, I was available to tell this story,” says Warren. “It’s as relevant today as it ever has been, which is so disheartening to say.” The six-part series follows Mamie’s devastation and determination to show the world what happened to her son and demand action against racist violence.
“The excitement I felt when I got the role instantly turned into pure terror because I knew what a responsibility I had” to do Till-Mobley and her family justice, Warren says. The Virginia-born actress had never starred in a TV series but felt secure working with what she calls an embarrassment of artistic talent, including series directors Gina Prince-Bythewood, Tina Mabry, Julie Dash and Kasi Lemmons.
After playing Turner, Warren was no stranger to embodying a historic trailblazer while leading a production highlighting their legacy. “When I’m portraying someone’s actual life, I do whatever I can to find an essence of that person within myself,” Warren says. That meant reading as much as she could about Till-Mobley, whose activism is less familiar to many people than what happened to her son. “That wasn’t OK with me,” she adds. “Why did I know more about Emmett’s death and not enough about his life, or about Mamie?”
Warren says she was shocked to learn how young Mamie was when her son was killed — just 33, Warren’s age when she signed on to the project — and started building her performance from there. “Physicality is always my way into a character: how they walk, how they breathe, how they talk,” she explains.
Since Women of the Movement aired in January, Warren has heard from families who watched it together and from teachers who added it to their school curriculum. “That is where change happens: when you show young people that we have the power not only to make change but to fight for each other.”
Warren made a triumphant return to Tina when Broadway reopened in the fall — and brought home the Tony Award for best actress in a musical, a life’s dream come true. Having forged a career of embodying monumental women, Warren wants to work on projects that get people talking — and help them recognize their shared humanity. “I want to make more stories that push conversations forward and allow us to see each other as human beings,” she says. “That is the goal.”
This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.