Phylicia Rashad Speaks on Her Surprise Return as Vonda Brooks in ‘Diarra from Detroit’ (Exclusive)

Logo text At an age when many are winding down or retiring all together, Phylicia Rashad is working more than ever. Her last year was especially busy, and not just for a woman closing in on her 80s. As a director, she made her Broadway debut with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Branden Jacobs Jenkins’ Purpose starring LaTanya Richardson, Harry Lennix and Kara Young, who won her second Tony for it. Purpose also won the Tony for best play. On screen, she starred in the faith-based Netflix film Ruth & Boaz produced by Tyler Perry and Devon Franklin, schooled as the dignified old-school grandmother Renee on The Chi and engaged in verbal fisticuffs with Audra McDonald’s Mrs. Dorothy Scott as the formidable Mrs. Elizabeth Kirkland in season three of the multiple Emmy-nominated The Gilded Age. Last year, she also touched down in Atlanta to film her part in the second season of the unorthodox whodunit series Diarra from Detroit, reprising her 2024 role as Vonda Brooks, a mother whose son Deonte went missing from a mall visit after she looked away briefly. Diarra puts her natural investigative skills as an elementary school teacher to work to find her new love connection whom she believes is that little boy that was kidnapped from the mall and has been kidnapped again as an adult now known as Chris. Season’s one driving storyline is inspired by creator Diarra Kilpatrick’s native Detroit. In 1994, four-year-old D’Wan Sims went missing from the mall and still has never been found. But that child is found in Diarra from Detroit’s version. And Rashad’s Vonda Brooks is an important key. It’s a gift Kilpatrick still didn’t believe even while filming the second season. Phylicia Rashad, who served as dean of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at her and Boseman’s alma mater, the HBCU Howard University from 2021 to 2024, is royalty, especially in the Black community. Over 40 years after The Cosby Show debuted in 1984, her impact in her iconic, two-time Emmy-nominated role as Clair Huxtable can still be felt. Breaking that glass ceiling as the first television show to revolve around an upper middle class Black family led by a husband in Bill Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable who is an OB-GYN and a wife in Rashad’s Clair, who is an attorney, and together they have five children is still impactful today. The Cosby Show was the No. 1 show for five of its eight seasons, tying with Roseanne for one of them. And that was at a time when there were just a handful of channels, so the entire country had to find some common ground. For Kilpatrick, however, Rashad’s work on stage is most inspiring. “It was magical to have the opportunity to work with Phylicia because I’m a theatre nerd first, and I’ve seen her in so many plays. People associate her so much with Clair Huxtable, but I also associate her with some real indelible performances that I’ve seen on stage. I knew she was capable of doing whatever, that she had such versatility as an actor. And then the greatest joy has been to discover that she is a really great human being, really warm and supportive. This season, we’re seeing how fun she is and how spicy she can be, and I love that.” Yet the social media outcry to Ms. Vonda’s revelation to Diarra that she slept with all of The Temptations, even detailing some of their sexual prowess, was a response to the actress, not the character. As a creator, Kilpatrick was pleased by the reaction. “I love to surprise people. I love to not only introduce people to new talent that they haven’t seen necessarily, like me or whomever, but also to reintroduce people to a talent that they have seen in a different way or a slightly left of center way.” During an Atlanta set visit at Tyler Perry Studios, The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Rashad exclusively about why she accepted the role of Vonda Brooks in a brand-new show, then on BET+, from an up-and-coming creator in Kilpatrick. Below, she details her return in season two, her perspective to the social media reaction to Ms. Vonda’s Temptations’ reveal, and how she juggles so many different characters so well. *** What enticed you to become a part of Diarra from Detroit? Was it because it was a new show? Yes, that’s part of it. And the writing. I hadn’t met Diarra, but when I read the script, my thought was that whoever wrote this is really clever and onto something. The way in which she writes, I would say it crosses genre. She has a real feel for cinema that’s evocative of film noir — her pacing, her timing. It was just like one of those 1940s or 1950s [whodunit] films and all the roads that you end up traveling down. The timing in her writing alone is so fresh and so quick and so sharp. And it’s combined with contemporary urban culture. That’s an interesting combination, and it works. So, what drew you specifically to Ms. Vonda? I like what Vonda was doing. Here was a woman who is complex and complicated, whose personal history isn’t necessarily ideal. She is wanting to make amends. She is wanting to make something of her life that will somehow balance the terrible misstep. With children, you have to be careful. You can turn away and, in an instant, all it takes is an instance, and the worst could happen. And she experiences a parent’s worst nightmare. Worst nightmare. She was a young mother, and her life was not fleshed out. To think about losing your son because you had to have an album; I don’t know how you live with that. So she lived with that by rescuing other people’s children. You don’t know what she’s up to when you see her at first. You don’t know what that is. And this is true about people, it’s so easy to judge someone by what you think you know, based on what you think you see, without really seeing and certainly without knowing. There was this kind of backlash or a whole social media moment over Ms. Vonda and her fondness for The Temptations. Was there a backlash? People were like “this is Clair Huxtable.“ Oh no, it’s not Clair Huxtable talking like that. I know. But I’m going to say, thank you. It says a couple of things to me. First of all, that there is great appreciation for the work I did with Mr. Cosby, great appreciation for that work to this day, and that is gratifying to me because of what that work meant for me, personally and professionally, and what it has meant for so many people. So I’m going to say thank you for that. Yes, that wasn’t Clair Huxtable talking like that. That was Vonda Brooks. That was another kind of mother, another kind of mother who loved no less. This is what I meant by how easy it is for us to pass judgment without knowing. But you look at what she was doing and it was really very noble. She didn’t have to put herself in harm’s way. She really went all out to rescue people, to save [kids] so other parents wouldn’t have to go through what she went through. And the moment when Diarra realizes this, Ms. Vonda inspires her and is actually key to her bringing Chris or Deonte, as Ms. Vonda named him, home. Let’s talk about the second season. You’ve come back. Where is Ms. Vonda now that her Deonte, now Chris, is back. What are her emotions? In the first season when she’s sitting at that table with Diarra, this is the last scene they have together, and she’s talking about him. She tells her what happened on that day. She says, “You know that people are saying he’s dead.” But inside herself, she knows and feels that he’s alive somewhere out there. That’s a very strong bond, and it speaks to her longing and her love and the weight that she carries as she waits. There’s a heavy weight now that’s lifted because he’s back. He’s home, he is alive. There’s a vindication of sorts, and maybe not for everybody yet, but she knows the truth of her involvement, or I should say, non-involvement. She knows the truth of what she was thinking and doing that day, and she lived with that, and she watched her husband waste away after that. Somebody who was not the fanciest guy in the world, but who was good to her. She watched that happen. That’s a serious guilt. Now it’s lifted because he’s back now. There are people in her house again, people in her yard again, enjoying her food and her drinks in her environment and celebrating the return of her son. Yes, but at some point, her interaction with her now adult son has to get heady, because he was alive. And he couldn’t contact his mother. Did he even know about his mother, Ms. Vonda? He was taken as a young boy. There’s some brainwashing that went on there. He was reared by somebody else. He was a young boy, and that lady kept him in secret and in silence to protect him. That’s a serious psychological trauma for a young child to go through for the parent as well, because of the memories you hold on to. He’s back now and there has to be a resolution because there’s still unspoken things between them. And it’s hard for her because you have a child that you love, but you don’t know him quite the way he is. She remembers him as he was. She has kept his room all these years exactly the way it was the day he disappeared. That’s a lot. (Left to right): Glynn Turman as Ron, Phylicia Rashad as Vonda, Shannon Wallace as Chris, Diarra Kilpatrick as Diarra, Chris Powell as Mac and DomiNque Perry as Aja in season two of Diarra From Detroit. BET/Paramount+ It’s not atypical either for people who go through that kind of trauma. So where did you pull from for Ms. Vonda? Did you do any research or was it just being a mother yourself and the gravitas of imagining the worst that can happen to a mother and her child? Being a mother and imagining that. And, also, knowing how it feels as a mother who is a human being who didn’t necessarily always make the best or the right choices. You don’t find that out until they’re teenagers or grown folks, and they come back and they tell you (laughs). And then you’re like, “Well, why didn’t you say something?” The truth of the matter is, as a parent, no matter how vigilant you are, there are things you don’t know because you’re not with them 24/7, especially when they’re going off to school and going out; you don’t know what happens all the time. Yeah, that’s true. Think about yourself. Does your mother know everything about you? No, absolutely not, especially when you grow up. Especially when you grow up. Your teenage years is when it starts. So now, what is Ms. Vonda’s relationship now to Diarra since Diarra is the one that’s brought her child back? She is very grateful to her. She lovingly calls her Skinny Mini. When she first met her, she thought she was kind of comical, and not always with it. But she sensed that there was something that was going to be beneficial, especially when she learned that she was snooping around trying to find out what happened to Deonte and somewhat suspicious of Vonda’s connection to whatever happened. But she trusted her and she included Diarra in what she was doing. That’s how she met her. She told her, “Come and ride with me, and I’ll tell you everything you want. Otherwise, you know, forget about it.” But we’re going to go save somebody along the way. She didn’t even explain what was going on. They didn’t know what was going on [with Ms. Vonda]. They didn’t know what the bat was for. And the audience didn’t know. No. Vonda knew. She knew where she was going and what she had to do. Now, how do you do all this? You and your sister. You both have 50 million jobs. How do you make time for it all? I mean you were Renee on The Chi, Mrs. Kirkland on The Gilded Age, Ms. Vonda on Diarra from Detroit and then directing Purpose on Broadway and winning the Tony for Best Play. How? Oh, that part. It’s the work that we do. We’re trained to do it. We’ve been in training since we were very young. We began with our mother and our father. Yes, discipline, which is not a heavy and hateful word, because discipline is what frees us. That’s where the freedom is. In discipline. That’s where you find it. *** Season 2 of the BET+ series Diarra from Detroit premiered on Paramount+ Wednesday, July 29 with two episodes featuring Phylicia Rashad in the first episode as Ms. Vonda. One new episode streams every Wednesday through September 9. Paramount+ is also streaming all eight episodes of the first season, which ran on BET+ and BET previously, free on their YouTube channel.