Exclusive: Brandee Evans Talks Playing Mercedes On Starz’s New Erotic Series ‘P-Valley’
Currently playing on Starz is its erotic new series “P-Valley,” which airs on Sundays at 9pm.
Based on her play Pussy Valley, creator Katori Hall (The Mountaintop, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical) serves as showrunner as well as executive producer.
Down deep in the Mississippi Delta lies an oasis of grit and glitter in a rough patch of human existence where beauty can be hard to find. This southern-fried, hour-long drama tells the kaleidoscopic story of a little-strip-club-that-could and the big characters who come through its doors—the hopeful, the lost, the broken, the ballers, the beautiful, and the damned. Trap music meets film noir in this lyrical and atmospheric series that dares to ask what happens when small-town folk dream beyond the boundaries of the Piggly Wiggly and the pawnshop.
Brandee Evans plays Mercedes, the OG of the group. Prior to this leading role, Evans had appeared in Trey Haley's Note to Self, and she has since gone on to appear in supporting roles on “The New Edition Story,” Lethal Weapon and, most recently, as Tina Brown in BET's “The Bobby Brown Story." She also had a guest-starring role in “Games People Play.”
Mercedes is described as “Fierce and ambitious, Mercedes is a true boss. After a long reign as the queen of the Pynk, this enterprising hustler is ready to hang up her Lucites and start anew. Determined to parlay her side hustle as a youth dance-team coach into a viable career, she wrestles daily with the respectability politics that demand she feel ashamed of her floss-filled past. As quick with an insult as she is with a prayer, this emotional gangster is fueled by the gift of intuition and a child-like optimism despite seeing the worst of the world. When unforeseen obstacles threaten to derail her retirement, she’s forced to reckon with her own deep-seated fear of failure, a manipulative mother and a new competitor for her Pynk throne. “
BlackFilmandTV.com spoke exclusively with Evans about getting the role and what Mercedes is about.