Kandi Burruss said working alongside “Reasonable Doubt” stars Emayatzy Corinealdi and Morris Chestnut was an amazing experience, but a bit intimidating in the beginning.
“Coming on set for ‘Reasonable Doubt,’ they have so many amazing actors on that show, so it can be a little intimidating,” Burruss told TheWrap. “It was awesome working with them — they were amazing. But, it is a little intimidating, because they are so great at what they do and obviously have done great things that I’ve already seen that it’s like, ‘OK, I have got to step my game up.”
The Grammy-winning songstress comes into the courtroom as cast newbie Eboni Phillips, who “Reasonable Doubt” fans learn is the mother of Jamarion ‘JT’ Tucker’s child, Natasha. She makes her first appearance at the end of Episode 8: “Change the Game,” and in Episode 9: “Who You Wit” signs on to help Jax Stewart (Corinealdi) and Corey Cash (Chestnut) win their case and protect Shannelle (Shannon Kane) from being convicted of murdering JT.
The opportunity to play Eboni came to Burruss quickly and in an unexpected way. She and “Reasonable Doubt” creator Raamla Mohamed just so happened to cross paths while in route to Atlanta; Burruss’ hometown and one of the filming locations for the Hulu/Onyx Collective series.
“I was on a trip coming back home to Atlanta, and I ran into Raamla … and she was letting me know she was coming to Atlanta to work on the show, and we exchanged information. So I hit her up, and we started talking,” Burruss explained. “We met for dinner and she asked, ‘What type of stuff do you really want to do?’ And I was like, ‘I’ve always wanted a role that could really show the in depth side of me to something that people never see me do … something that could be really emotional and all of that. And she was like, ‘Oh, OK.’ In my mind, I was thinking, ‘OK, maybe we’ll get to work together one day in the future. But, maybe a week or so later, they hit up my team and brought me in to read for the role.”
Not only did Mohamed fulfill Burruss’ desire to play a layered character, the role itself helps amplify the second season’s focus on highlighting the horrors and realities of domestic violence and how some victims live with those related traumas years later or even when they are no longer in contact with their abuser. Burruss said she used real life experiences she’s witnessed to help her hone in on the character.
“It’s a lot of different issues that she’s dealing with that I’ve seen out there in the world,” Burruss said. “It was like multiple things happening in this one character, so I felt like I had a lot of people that I could pull from and situations that I’ve seen in real life to help me get in her mindset.”
She continued: “She’s a woman who’s dealt with substance abuse, trying to stay on the right path. But obviously she falls to the wayside, [and] she also is dealing with past abuse in a relationship from a man who’s popular, successful and all those things, which is so crazy. All the stuff that’s happening in the world right now — we have these men who are successful, who are popular, and [the] women that are with them automatically feel like, ‘Yeah, whatever she did whatever he said she did.’ You always believe in the person that you look at as the hero, but that other person in their life, they just fall to the wayside because they feel defeated. They feel like nobody’s going to listen to them, nobody’s going to believe them, and so it was a lot of things that I can pull from to help her come to life. So it was really exciting when I first got the details of the character and what she was going to be.”
While Burruss said she was initially nervous working next to “Reasonable Doubt’s” stellar cast, she felt more at ease after receiving a welcoming text from McKinley Freeman, who stars as Jax’s husband Lewis in the series. The two previously worked together on the 2014 holiday flick “Second Chance Christmas.”
“On my first day being on set for this, he text me. He was like, ‘Hey, I’m happy for us to be working together.’ And that made me feel really good, a familiar face,” Burruss shared, adding that she takes the craft of acting very seriously after years of being a “Real Housewife.”
“Coming into the acting world, people who have been actors forever, and that’s all they’ve done was mainly feed their craft as an actor, a lot of them, back in the day, wasn’t really showing a lot of love to people who came from, ‘Oh, you an artist, now you’re acting. Or, ‘You’re on reality TV and now you’re acting.’ Sometimes they look at people who come from those other worlds, like, ‘You’re just getting this because of popularity’ and not getting it because you’re really good at this,” she explained. “That’s why I always come to do the work, because I want people to recognize, like, no, this ain’t that type of party. I didn’t just get here just because I’m popular.”
Season 2 of “Reasonable Doubt,” a Hulu/Onyx Collective series, is currently streaming.
