Tichina Arnold's feeling no 'Remorse'
Starz LeBron James-produced basketball comedy presents actress as a very different mother from the one she played in Everybody Hates Chris.
* SURVIVOR'S REMORSE. 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Starz.
Tichina Arnold's mother-son talks have come a long way since she was dispensing advice and discipline to a young Chris (Tyler James Williams) in Chris Rock's autobiographical sitcom "Everybody Hates Chris."
A loooong way.
On Saturday's episode of the Starz comedy "Survivor's Remorse," Arnold's character, Cassie Calloway, laid out some facts of life to her basketball star son, Cam (Jessie T. Usher).
It was a mother-son sex talk for the ages (if not for all ages) and it was, Arnold said, in a recent interview, "awesome" to film.
"It was the first time he and I really were able to have a really different mommy-and-son moment," said the former "Martin" star of the scene in which Cam attempts to dissuade his mother from having vaginal rejuvenation surgery.
"I'm trying to step up and be a man," he told her.
"I didn't ask you to be a man. I asked you to be a son. A son who understands that when you were born, I was still a girl," said Cassie, before using his hoodie to make a point no one who saw it is likely to forget.
It's a funny, painfully honest scene. One thing that may have made it particularly fun for Arnold was that she wasn't in it alone.
On "Chris," because of the restrictions on child actors' hours, "I used to act with Styrofoam heads . . . when there was nobody there to stand in."
"Survivor's Remorse," whose producers include LeBron James, was renewed last week after its Aug. 22 Season 2 premiere hit series-high ratings.
Arnold said she's happy with the direction creator Mike O'Malley ("Glee") has been taking her character, a single mother whose son has struck it rich.
"She's not, you know, a kind of flighty, fly-by-night individual. You can tell she's worked very hard to take care of her kids and now she has a child that has reached success after all of her love and hard work that she put into him, raising him. So now she's in this world, in this new world, how does she handle it?" Arnold said.
"I love stuff like . . . the vaginal rejuvenation. Because you don't see it coming. You know, who would think to do a whole episode on vaginal rejuvenation?"
Especially on a show set in the world of basketball.
"Yeah. I kind of like that. I love allowing my character to be a different kind of backdrop for the B-story or the A-story. I like to intertwine into all of the characters' storylines. Because they do defer to me as Mama Cassie."
The mother whose athlete son buys her a big house may be a cliche, but Arnold wants to make sure Cassie isn't presented as being only in it for the money.
"I have that moment where I say, 'You hit the money!' and he goes, 'Ma!' And I say, 'I'm sorry, baby,' " she said.
Still, that's how Cassie sees him sometimes, she said.
"He's the money, he's the husband. But he's still my son. So how do I balance all of this? Because [in her own life] I was a single mother for my daughter for a good eight years, and never expected to be a single mother. But it's like how do I be a grounded mother, how do I be a mother that is well-rounded but still be single and not have a father to help me with her? So there are moments when I could express to her, 'I'm not your daddy, but I have to fill a daddy's shoes. And I'm still your mommy.' And I think I'm finding my way with them, with my children on the show that way."
Her own daughter, she said, is "11 going on 25," and she tells her "all the time, 'I'm not a perfect mother. I'm figuring it out just how you're figuring it out.' "
In 2012, Arnold, who's been an actress since childhood, married Darico Hines, then an assistant basketball coach at St. John's University, and a former assistant coach of the Golden State Warriors.
Just a coincidence, she said.
Before a friend fixed them up, "I knew nothing about basketball, nothing. And I never dated basketball players, never dated anybody in the sports world," she said.
Her husband loves the show but complains that "they should have hired . . . someone who played like a real basketball player," she said. "I said, 'No, not necessarily. Because, baby, it's not about the game of basketball.' "
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