In 2008, Sean Combs and the rest of the major characters from the 2004 Broadway revival of a Raisin in the Sun, starred in a television film of the production.
Music mogul Sean Combs stars as Walter Lee Younger, a chauffeur who longs to own his own business and prove his manhood. Phylicia Rashad—who became the first African-American actress to win a Best Actress Tony Award for the stage version—plays Walter Lee’s mother, Lena, a woman desperate to retire from her job as a domestic.
The film debuted at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast by ABC on February 25, 2008. 12.7 million viewers tuned into the program. The production garnered two NAACP Image Awards.
“Ms. Merkerson, a two-time Tony nominee and one of the finest American actresses working today, gives us not only Lena’s hard-won centeredness and conviction but also the doubts, born of churning and changing times, now nibbling at her certainty. It’s a nigh-perfect, in-the-moment performance that makes this play credible…”
“WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The moment finally arrives — and you just knew it was coming — when Robert O’Hara burns a hole right through “A Raisin in the Sun.” It occurs well into the second half of Mr. O’Hara’s always absorbing revival of this watershed play, which opened Saturday on the Main Stage of the Williamstown Theater Festival, with a cast that includes a magnificent S. Epatha Merkerson.”
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