Clean Slate’s George Wallace, Laverne Cox on their pitch, Cliffhanger ends

Seven years ago, when Hollywood dived his head into his TV -Genstart -æra, comedian George Wallace would add another nostalgic series to dock: a reinstated version of Sanford and Son.

“Sanford and Son makes everyone feel good, ”Wallace says The Hollywood reporter. “Just hearing the music, already that smile comes on your face. So I said, ‘Let me go to Norman Lear.’ I had known him for 30 years and I said, ‘I will restart Sanford and Son‘He says,’ Are you kidding? You can’t do that show. Get a Vri and come back. ” ”

Wallace did not immediately know what his fresh roof of the 70s Redd Foxx -Sitcom developed and executed produced by Lear and Bud Yorkin would be, but he remembered an actor’s name he couldn’t escape.

“At that time, Orange is the new black was very popular. I’ve never seen the show, but I still heard about this launcher Cox. Who in hell is the lavers COX? But when I was thinking about her show, I wondered what if I had a son who left home and came back, and it was 23 years later and my child says, ‘Dad, I will come home tomorrow.’ “

“And that child says,” Cox interacts, “” I was never your son, I was always your daughter. ”” ”

Therein lies plot twist in the middle of Pure slatePrime Video Series Co-created, Co-Executive produced and co-starring Wallace and Cox as father and daughter Harry and Desiree Slate. One of Lear’s his last projects (TV legend died 5 December 2023, at the age of 101), the comedy begins with Desiree showing up on Harry’s doorstep in mobile who, although it immediately accepts Desiree, needs help with to remember his pronoun and other aspects of father of a daughter.

“That’s what’s good about Pure slate”Says Wallace. “You get to learn while you go together.”

Although the show is not completely biographical, the show from Cox’s lived experiences that grow up in mobile and are bred in the African Methodist Episcopal (Ame) Church, where Harry worships in the series and Desiree’s closed best friend Louis (DK Uzoukwu) is the choir director .

“It’s different, but it is very similar to the church I grew up in Bethel Ame Church,” says Cox. “The great thing about being an actor is that we respond to external stimuli. Sometimes it’s something an actor can do, sometimes it’s a place and place was really strong here.

“The church provoked very As I walked in, ”continues Cox. “It’s a gift, but it also triggers, and it’s also wonderful and everything we did in church I love. I knew when we had (The Greenlight) to make the show that the church had to be prominent in it. There is so much big comedy in the church first and foremost and there is so much drama in church. “

Desiree’s drama comes with the help of church members, including the priest who is not fond of her presence in their teeth. Save for Louis’ mother Ella (Telma Hopkins) and a small group of older women gathering that make it their business to make Desiree feel welcome.

“There are so many black Christian women just like her all over the south,” says Cox. “There is actually an organization of Christian mothers who have LGBTQ kids and they got started just to give hugs to LGBTQ+ people. This is the thing that is so many people who are Christians who love. I grew up reading the Bible, summarized the Sunday School’s lesson every Sunday, and there is much going on in the Bible, but in the New Testament is God love, Jesus is love, he added, he died for our sins. It’s God’s job to judge and it’s our job to love. “

The feeling of love is what Cox describes the show as “a warm hug” wants viewers to go away with, especially as the current presidential administration limits the gender expression to male and female and prohibits transportations from earning in the military and seeking gender -affirming treatment during prison or under 19 years of age.

“Nothing the government will do will keep us from our gender affirming care,” Cox said during this interview, previously published about Thr. “That’s the truth. It never has, never. We are resilient people. We are resourceful people. “

Resistance in Pure slate is much more easy to Desiree who, apart from Kirkebigotry, also struggles with how to let love in when it shows up on her doorstep in a different package than she imagined – that of Mack (Jay Wilkison) a lone father of Daughter Opal (Norah Murphy) and Harry’s second in command of the car wash he owns. The chemistry between Desiree and Mack is a slow combustion that leaves the audience on the edge right into the final and perhaps future seasons.

“No spoilers, but it’s my favorite scene,” Wallace says of the end of the season’s eighth episode, “Born again … again.” “I would very much like to do it again right now. I love that scene. “

Whether Wallace and Cox will come to make the show again seeing. But the series ends on a juicy cliffhanger who will ask answers from the audience.

“We don’t know if we get a season two,” says Cox, “but we’re ready and the story is planned.”

All episodes of Pure slate streaming at the moment on Prime Video.