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Never And Again Production Shots

Source: BET + / BET +

If the snowy weather is getting you down, you may want to get into a good movie this weekend. New to BET+ is romantic comedy, Never and Again, starring Jackie Long and Denise Boutté.

“It’s a story of redemption,” Boutté told MadameNoire by phone. “It’s a love story of course, and it’s simply about life. You know life is going to throw you some stuff. You have to heal to a certain degree to allow your next chapter to open. You know, a lot of times we fall into situations, relationships, or whatever it is and we put up a wall. And so it’s very hard once you do that to open up again. For my character especially, she gets the house, the car, the man. So, all that stuff that she worked so hard to get in order for her to be ‘perfect” and achieve the American Dream. But she still didn’t deal with stuff in her past so it comes to back to bite her derriere later on. She’s basically put all these emotions away and we all know that we can try to suppress them but as soon as something comes in and triggers us, all of that baggage is coming. So when Kevin comes back into her life after a situation that makes her guarded, she tries to deny it but feelings and emotions, when things are meant to be, are going to resurrect. If you don’t confront them, you may miss out on the best thing in your life or you’ll have that hole and that void while asking yourself ‘What if?'”

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At the heart of the storyline is an extramarital affair that escalated between Long and Boutté’s characters, Jasmine and Kevin; however, the lines between right and wrong become a bit blurred in this film, so I asked the co-stars whether or not they feel there is ever a circumstance that makes it okay to cheat.

“It ain’t never no f–king time to have an affair,” Long says. “If you married, if y’all married, it should be all love. Shouldn’t be no reason to be having an affair.”

“Nah, dog. And hey, here’s the deal. You know, for dramatic purposes, fine,” Boutté adds. “You know, that was the whole point, like [in a movie] you only got an hour and some minutes to make some stuff happen, but I mean it just shows in those moments that it was too strong to deny. She was in denial. He was trying to figure out what the hell, you know, what’s going on with my heart and sooner or later, the build-up just exploded. For dramatic purposes it works, but personally speaking, I wouldn’t be giving people passes to go out and cheat.”

Part of the filming for Never and Again took place amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and while COVID changed protocol on set a bit, Long says that he felt blessed to be working through the pandemic because not everyone has that story.

“Honestly, it was like, ‘Wow, great. I’m working during this time. I get to get a character.’ Ain’t nothing change, it’s just that we’re going through COVID,” he says. “Everything is the same to me. I haven’t been treated differently. The only thing that’s different is that when you do these jobs, they’re testing you and all of that.  I was just more excited to be working during the pandemic because that’s something that people have been going through, like they haven’t been working. They haven’t been able to pay bills. They haven’t been doing that. And for me to be working during this time, it’s been great. I’ve been working [throughout] this whole pandemic.”
Never and Again is available for streaming on BET+.
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