When Jill Scott made her acting debut in 2007 as Sheila in “Why Did I Get Married?”, she likely couldn’t have predicted how deeply the character would imprint itself on Black cultural memory.
Nearly a decade later, Sheila still lives on in group chats, social media jokes, and knowing references to “going up the mountain” for the sake of love and marriage. Beyond generations of viewers jokingly going up mountains to save their metaphorical marriages, Scott revealed to Angie Martinez that she feels the resonating impact of her role to this day.
“Somebody mentions her to me pretty much every day of my life,” Scott shared on Angie Martinez IRL. “People still be like, ‘Oh, Jill, you let that guy treat you like that?’ No, no, no, no. That was acting.”
Though she says she’s never been a Sheila in a relationship in her personal life, she explained how her approach to the role was rooted in grace.
“I just wanted to give her grace. I’ve got a bad reputation, I think, at this point where people say that my characters tend to be weaker,” she said. “And I think that there are times when everybody is a little weaker. I know there’s a lot of hard folk you know that are like, ‘Oh, I don’t get f——d. I’m straight, I know what I’m doing. I would never, never, never… [But you] their feelings hurt because you don’t have any vulnerability in you, and I think that that lives as well.”
She continued, “I think that sometimes women are soft, maybe a little too soft. I think that women are sometimes strong, sometimes too strong. You know what I mean? Like we’re really out here just being people, and living within the circumstances that our lives present. We can break out of those circumstances, but sometimes you’re in them, and you have to figure out how to move forward. And not every path is the same. We’re really humans out here trying to figure it out, and that’s the gist of it. If you don’t get that, I don’t know what to tell you.”
And while she found a power and grace in her character, she admits that there were moments on set that made her feel the psychological weight that came with playing a plus size Black woman in society.
“I didn’t like how much people would make fun of her. I remember the scene on the plane and man, the scene on the plane, Tyler had extras make fun of me when I got on the plane. They were just going back and forth, making jokes about Sheila’s weight, and obviously, you know, I had on a whole fat suit, and it was cumbersome. So the walk was genuine. The sitting down was genuine and all the things. And I practiced in it quite a bit so that it felt genuine to the character, but the folks on the flight really went in on fat jokes, and it sucked. It really hurt,” she said, revealing that she did not know the extras’ commentary would be part of the scene. And though it was hurtful, Scott explains how the moment on set helped redefine her mindset.
“I decided that I am not fat. And that made me feel better, and that’s how I move through my life. I’m multicolored. I’m multi-dimensional. I’m soft, and I’m strong,” she explained. “It’s a stew to make a person. And I feel the same way about acting, like it’s a stew. There are other parts of Sheila that luckily Sheriff Troy saw, and then they began their life together. Like, and even Mike, in the second [movie], he saw her, too.”
Now, while she did not share any details about the release date of “Why Did I Get Married Again?” or spoilers about Sheila’s storyline in the third installment of the beloved franchise, Scott did offer a glimpse into this next season of her life.
After years away from the spotlight, focusing on raising her son and “living,” as she says, Scott is stepping back into the music with her first album in 10 years, entitled “To Whom This May Concern.”
“The plan is that you work hard in your 20s. You work smart in your 30s. You work how you want to in your 40s. You work when you want to in your 50s, and you work if you want in your 60s. That came to me really early, and that’s the way that I’m planning my life,” she shared, reflecting on her journey.
“I recognize that who it’s for is who it’s really, really, really for, and I’m excited for those people,” she said of the upcoming project. “The intention is to start a personal revolution or to allow a personal revolution for whoever is listening. I’m very excited to see who will be affected. […] It’s ‘To Whom This May Concern’—if it don’t concern you, I’m cool. If it’s not your thing, okay.”
