On September 17, Sanaa Lathan and Lynn Whitfield joined the panel for CRWN Magazine’s screening of Nappily Ever After.
Of course, one of the most anticipated topics of the night was the triumphant scene where Violet Jones, played by Sanaa Lathan, cuts all her hair off.
After a painful breakup, and match with self about being the perfect woman and fitting into this box, Violet, while drunk, stands in the mirror, picks up a tiny rat tail comb and tries to get it through her hair. At her failed attempt she wails, smears her makeup and looks down at her ex-boyfriend’s clippers. She magnified the clippers, raised them before her eyes and began to caress, love, and gaze upon them. Suddenly, she takes the clippers and starts buzzing her head.
For the first time, we see Violet laughing and experimenting with her “beauty” angles. Her face is overwhelmed with joy and she is completely liberated by the fallen tresses. But there is a subtle indication of her sobriety, for in this moment she also comes to realize what she has done and releases a deeper wail in light of what brought her to this very moment.
With just a few strands left in the back of her head, she falls into bed and the entire audience at The Wing SoHo claps and rejoices at this inner romantic scene.
Throughout the film, Violet continues to battle with rocking this bald style and learns that she must own it. When she meets a 10 year old girl, Zoey, who ironically is the cause of her lost hair, she learns how to be herself just like this innocent child who is confident, fearless, and lives life nappily.
“I love the fact that this is a romantic comedy,” Lathan says. “I call it the fairytale for the modern woman because it’s a romantic comedy about falling in love with yourself.”
CRWN Magazine‘s audience all agreed as she continued, “Just like Love and Basketball was a love story through the world of basketball, this is about hair, but it’s really a metaphor for life and the journey that we take through life and stepping outside the box.”
Sanaa Lathan explains how everyone who signed onto the film was sort of nervous about getting this one shot—of Violet’s big chop—right.
Lathan says, “In the beginning, I was like, I’m not cutting my hair. I said, this is the 21st century, we have technology. We can do a bald cap and it will look real. I even did research and thought, well, I don’t have to do it. And a couple of people were like, you really should do it. And I was like, well you should do it, too.”
Producer Tracey Bing said, “We also all felt like in order to do this, it had to be authentic. And that’s what you see in the movie. We had three cameras because she could only do it once. It’s not like you could put the hair back again. And once it was over, we all just screamed and cried, and gathered around. It was such a beautiful moment on the set.”
From the animation of the hair salon chronicles at the start of the film, fit with relaxers, flat irons and an engagement ring found floating on a strand of hair, we knew we’d be in for an internal tug-o-war.
In the first scene, Violet appears as a young girl, reluctant to jump in the pool for fear of ruining her pressed hair and disturbing this image she is forced to uphold. At that young age she decided to free herself, against societal norms and her own mother’s will and jumps into the water only to be ridiculed by her school-girl crush when her hair begins to frizz. We see the rejection of self as her inner beauty is denied and never quite mended by her strict and classist mother.
The director, Haifaa Al Mansour, spoke about such a norm, being the first female filmmaker in Saudi Arabia, and shared how coming from a place where everything is forbidden helped her bring this story to life.
Whitfield also said, “I’m from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. [I had a] black, southern bell mama. Hard working but [she always said] ‘no, don’t get in the pool. No, don’t go in the humidity. No, don’t sweat, don’t sweat, don’t sweat. [She was] all about keeping it sweet, keeping it smooth,” Whitfield explains.
The panelists ended with what they hope viewers will gain from watching this Netflix film.
Sanaa Lathan: “I would love women to know that whatever box society or your parents, or you have put yourself in, that’s it’s ok to go inside and question what you really want. Do you really want to be in this box? And if you do, that’s fine. But question what it is that is important to you and who you really are, who you really want to express yourself as.”
Lynn Whitfield: “I hope that it will help women to walk in the authority of their purpose and who they are and just be that thing. Own that thing and be it. Weave, wig, afro, straight, curly, whatever it is.”
Everyone stood and cheered, and Lathan chimed in with a final “yaaaaaaas.”
Catch the film on Netflix on September 21, 2018.
