The Box: A Retrospective On ‘Girlfriends’, ‘The Game’ And The Limitless Ambition Of Mara Brock Akil
Mara Brock Akil - Jerritt Clark
If there is one recurring theme that seems to be persistent throughout the story of Mara Brock Akil and her career, it is that the writer, creator and producer has always believed in herself and in her dreams. She knew this in 1981 at the age of 11, when she was inspired by then-teen model Whitney Houston, who became one of the first African American cover models for Seventeen magazine. Three decades later, Houston would make her final film appearance in Sparkle (2012), the first screenplay written by Brock Akil. But even before her impressive film debut, one with the rare distinction of featuring one of the biggest stars on the planet, Mara Brock Akil had already built an even more impressive career in television.
Mara Brock Akil was born in Los Angeles and raised in Kansas City by her mother, Joan Demeter, going on to attend Northwestern University’s prestigious Medill School of Journalism. It was during her time at Northwestern that Brock Akil was first introduced to the world of theatre after writing and performing in a comedy skit for a show put on by the Black Student Union. With a strong performance, Professor Njoki McElroy of the university’s performance studies department offered Brock Akil a leading role in the school’s production of The Colored Museum. While her involvement in theatre did not fuel a sudden passion for acting, it did spark in her an interest in production, which is how Brock Akil found herself meeting Delle Chatman, a screenwriter and professor at Northwestern. After taking Chatman’s class on screenwriting, Brock Akil knew the career path that she had wanted to pursue.
Following her graduation from Northwestern in 1992, Brock Akil made a conscious decision to do something that very few, if any, graduates of high-ranking universities would choose to do: she took on an assistant manager position at a Gap store in Chicago. It was an important decision for her because even though she had earned a degree in journalism, she had no longer wanted to pursue a journalism career. Speaking of her decision, Brock Akil later stated that she “thought it was more important…to stay hungry,” and given her passions, it’s difficult to imagine being able to maintain that fire and drive when consumed with a completely different line of work. Brock Akil’s first foray into the entertainment industry came after she successfully auditioned for a speaking role in Alek Keshishian’s With Honors (1994), which was filming in Chicago. The time that she had spent with the film’s crew cemented in her the desire to work in production, giving her the push to make the move to Los Angeles and really break ground on her career.
Upon her arrival in Los Angeles, Brock Akil worked as a production assistant for The Sinbad Show, which gave her the opportunity to pitch herself as a writer to showrunners Ralph Farquhar and Michael Weithorn for an upcoming pilot. Given just one minute to pitch herself, Brock Akil told the duo that she would not waste their time discussing why she needed them, instead focusing her limited time on why they needed her: with a prospective series about a family run by a single mother, Brock Akil brought both personal experience and a desire to write for television. Her pitch was successful, and she got her start as a writing trainee for Farquhar and Weithorn’s Fox series South Central, going on to later write for UPN’s Moesha and acting as a supervising producer on The WB’s The Jamie Foxx Show. Her breakout as a creative finally came in 1999 when she was given the opportunity to write her own series, which was later revealed to be UPN’s (later The CW’s) Girlfriends, debuting in 2000. At just 29-years-old, Mara Brock Akil had already become one of Hollywood’s youngest Black female producers- so young, in fact, that during casting, Tracee Ellis Ross, the series’ eventual lead, had assumed that Brock Akil was also there to audition.
Starring Ross, Jill Marie Jones, Persia White and Golden Brooks, Girlfriends follows four Black women as they navigate their families, relationships and careers with a focus on their friendships with each other. Running for eight seasons, it is one of the longest-running comedies starred by a predominantly Black cast and has consistently been one of the most popular series among Black viewers. Ross’ Joan Clayton in particular, a brilliant and caring woman who looks out for her friends often before looking out for herself, was inspired by Brock Akil’s own mother. Working her way up from an entry level position as a secretary to “running her own company,” as a programmer, Brock Akil envisioned the same kind of ambition in her lead character. With Clayton, Brock Akil created a character that could empower Black women by showing a Black female lead who wasn’t afraid to leave behind her safe and comfortable career in law- one in which her ideas and accomplishments were minimized and once even credited to her male co-worker- to instead follow her dream of opening a restaurant and bar. In doing so, Brock Akil was able to share with viewers what her mother gave to her, having “clearly instilled,” in her the belief that she could indeed pursue her dreams. Girlfriends was not only revolutionary for being one of the few series that portrayed professional Black women, but it is also renowned for the authenticity with which it handled social issues and serious topics such as privilege, colorism and misogyny while rejecting stereotyping.
Following the success of Girlfriends, Brock Akil did not slow her momentum, going on to create The Game, a series focused on the relationships of professional athletes with their wives, girlfriends and mistresses. A spinoff of Girlfriends- including a main character in Melanie Barnett (Tia Mowry) who was even related to Joan Clayton- with several episodes directed by her husband, Salim Akil, The Game ran for three seasons on The CW before being canceled in 2009. Despite its lackluster performance with The CW, syndicated reruns of The Game became a popular mainstay at BET, with ratings numbers for its reruns often higher than their original airings on The CW. Two years after its cancelation, BET found an opportunity to expand its original programming and- given the success with which reruns of The Game had performed on the network- jumped on the opportunity at reviving the series, giving BET a proven commodity to build its content library and giving a loyal fanbase more of what they had wanted. “This is the beginning of building what scripted programming means to BET,” said Charlie Jordan Brookins, BET’s Senior Vice President of Original Programming, of the series revival. With a new home for its Season 4 premier, The Game went on to shatter ratings records for the network with a debut of 7.7 million viewers and would go on to become one of the highest rated shows for BET. Brock Akil would eventually achieve this distinction with BET twice, as Being Mary Jane- the first original scripted drama in the network’s history- later shared in that honor.
The extreme success of Mara Brock Akil hasn’t gone unnoticed, as she has received numerous honors and awards, including the National Association of Television Program Executives’ Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award and the Essence Magazine Visionary Award, has been named on the Showrunner Power Lists of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter and was inducted into her alma mater’s Hall of Achievement. However, success as a writer for Brock Akil has been more than just a personal accomplishment, as her very success is an indication of the growing success and prominence of women and people of color writers. In 2015, Brock Akil discussed attending a candidates’ night for the Writer’s Guild of America and noticing that the “mostly white and male,” board had come close to “fifty-fifty women and men,” including “a splattering of color” throughout. It was then that she saw “the potential of what the board could be…a more diverse board.” It’s undeniable that the hungry, ambitious, young Mara Brock Akil had something to do with this shift in writer’s rooms and in the expansion of diverse television programming, and the television industry today is better because of her.
