Source: John Lamparski / Getty
If you’ve seen 1997’s Soul Food, you know that it’s one of the classic films detailing the Black family experience. Full of classic lines and shocking moments, it’s not a movie many of us will forget.
One of those classic lines was delivered by Vanessa Williams, who played the role of Teri. Her dialogue confronting her husband Miles (played by Michael Beach) for sleeping with her cousin Faith (Gina Ravera) became an iconic scene.
During it, Williams said, “Oh, f*ck the family! I let the family into my house, and you know what happened? The family f*cked my husband.”
I can remember watching the movie for the first time and the reaction from Teri’s family members in the scene matched the one of my real-life family members watching it play out on screen.
During a recent interview, Vanessa Williams discussed the film with The Blairisms for their Savage Chat series, and shared that the line was not written in the script.
Blairisms: So f*ck the family. Did you read that in script and know that it was going to be one of the most iconic moments in Black culture, Black movie history, Black history?
Vanessa Williams: Well, that wasn’t in the script. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The great thing again about working with people who are undiscovered and need to have that fire in the belly. When we worked on Soul Food, George [Tillman Jr.] was a new director. This was something that he wrote about his family. So getting a chance to work with George, a young director and writer, I was like, ‘Let’s try this. Go for that. Let’s do it.’ I loved—and I’m not a mentor—but I loved supporting him and his choices. And I said, ‘Let me go for this.’ And he said, ‘Go ahead.’
Brilliant!
You can listen to the full interview in the video below.
