P-Valley stars Brandee Evans and J. Alphonse Nicholson has addressed the backlash the show has received for a gay sex scene between Nicholson's character Lil Murda and Teak.
Evans — who also recently had her first girl on girl scene on the show, told PopSugar, “Standing ovation to J. Alphonse . . . he taps into that character so beautifully. Alphonse always says that his job is to tell the story truthfully and respectfully, so I love that he’s not afraid. When I tell you, he gets so much flack for it, sometimes people feel like he goes too far. But that’s not fair, to me, because he’s not going far — he’s going there, which is the truth of it.”
She continued, “He’s showing what is truly happening . . . Some people might want to close their eyes to it, but nothing’s going away, so hopefully this world will allow some people to open up their eyes and see that love is love.”
Nicholson, who is a straight man married to wife Nafeesha Nicholson, told Pop Sugar, “I said, “Wow, we’re going there and people are going to see myself as an actor, but also the character, Lil Murda, in a way that they’ve never seen me before.”
He continued,” It’s extremely important to show these images because it’s a part of life that not only is taboo within the Black community on a daily basis, but in the TV and film worlds as well. We haven’t seen that often, and even in the moments that we’ve seen it, I think it was kind of expected. Lil Murda is one of those characters that constantly gives you things that you don’t expect, and so I’m grateful that creator Katori Hall trusted me with the choices that were being made.”
He also spoke on working with co-star John Clarence Stewart, saying, “Sex scenes are just uncomfortable — it doesn’t matter what your sexual preference is or who you like or what you like, it’s just uncomfortable because there are so many people in the room and lights and cameras and all these things. But we knew we had a job to do. I got a real feeling that we both understood that we were gonna make history. We both felt what that energy was gonna be and locked in and got it done.”