Pam Grier is ready to share her stories on the stage and on TV.
The actress, who came to fame starring in “blaxploitation” films in the 1970s, said she’s developing a musical based on her iconic 1974 classic “Foxy Brown.” She announced the news while appearing as a guest on “The Jennifer Hudson Show” this week.
“We’re going to be doing ‘Foxy Brown’ also as a musical,” Grier told Hudson without sharing many details about the stage adaptation. Grier also revealed that she’s bringing her 2010 memoir, “Foxy: My Life in Three Acts,” to the small screen.
The 75-year-old actress is producing a seven-part limited series based on the book, which will explore “her relationships with basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and the comedians Freddie Prinze and Richard Pryor,” according to Deadline.
“It can’t be a seven-hour movie, but it’s going to be a [limited] series like the series I’m promoting today, ‘Them,’ so it’ll be seven episodes, shot like a film,” Grier said.
The actress also touched on the importance of female stunt performers during her appearance on Hudson’s show. Grier pushed for a stunt double in her early films and stunt performer J.D. Davis was hired shortly thereafter, Deadline reported.
“It was very important to be authentic, because now I’m responsible for teaching a patriarchal society that a woman could be a martial artist, that could stand up to aggression,” Grier explained to Hudson about her impact on the film industry and culture at large.
“She made me look good,” Grier said about Davis. “To this day, all of the women have a stunt double. So they’re not injured, so they can do the work, do the acting, and let the stunt double do the professional moves and you can go back and no one’s injured. You don’t want to get injured for what? A movie? We’re more important. We’ve gotta live past the filmmaking so that when you have that, that’s an industry. And they make you look so good.”