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One of the shows that helped define the 2010s is coming to an end. ABC’s Black-ish aired its series finale this past April and is currently in the midst of its final awards campaign. Accolade season is nothing new for the Anthony Anderson-led sitcom, as Black-ish has racked up enough gold to warrant its own separate Wikipedia page. Since debuting in September 2014, Black-ish has accumulated 28 total trophies, consequently making it one of the most decorated sitcoms in recent memory. That being said, only one of those awards is a Primetime Emmy. The series captured the accolade for Outstanding Contemporary Hairstyling in 2020.
Two years later, Black-ish has the chance to do it again. The hit show was nominated for both Outstanding Contemporary Hairstyling and Outstanding Contemporary Costumes at the 74th Primetime Emmy Awards, which are set to air next month.
Speaking with ComicBook.com, hair department head Nena Ross Davis and lead men’s barber Stacey Morris emphasized that the recognization for not just Black-ish, but their work specifically, is an honor.
“We put so much hard work into this show. And we don’t do our work for this recognition, so when it comes, it’s like the icing on the cake,” Morris said. “And to end like that, and actually our nomination and the wardrobe department has a nomination. So it’s like, ‘Wow, it literally fell on us.'”
“It’s always an honor to be nominated, just to be noticed by our peers and the fans of the show and everything. Of course, we want the win, but just to be nominated, it’s just like an honor and a blessing,” Davis added. “It’s just all of our hard work that we put into the show. And like Stacey said, each episode that we do, we don’t do it in regards to, ‘Oh, we’re going to do this one for the Emmy nomination or whatever.’ We just have our creative juices flow. And then at the end of the season, we decide, ‘Okay, which episode do we like the best? Which episode do we want to pitch?’ It’s all about the show in a whole, but we have to pick one episode.”
Morris and Davis come from two different ends of Black-ish experience. Morris began on the series as a personal barber for Anderson, Laurence Fishburne, Marcus Scribner, and Miles Brown and eventually worked her way up to fronting the men’s hair side of things as a whole.
“I’ve been there since inception of the pilot, and I have a history with Anthony. So when he got this show, he was really excited. [He] wanted me to be on board,” Morris said. “It was interesting because I’ve been a part of his life, and a lot of the show topics and family stuff reflects his own family, so it was very familiar and just fun to be a part of and help to make this vision come to life to the world.”
Davis joined the show in Season 7, seeing immediate success as herself and Davis were nominated for Outstanding Contemporary Hairstyling at the 2021 Emmys.
“I came on the tail end. I got the call from the unit production manager and she invited me along to be the department head,” Davis noted. “Working with Stacey was amazing. And working with the cast and crew, they just accepted me with open arms. It’s been a great journey.”
That journey concluded with Season 8, where the entire hair department was given more creative freedom with the characters’ respective hairstyles.
“We’re able to pick more of the styles and more of the look, and we’re not under the microscope of ABC. Obviously, Season 8, we are more trusted and things like that,” Davis revealed. “So just getting with each character, deciding on what they want, what looks they want, having a vision board of this is what we’re going to do this week for this style and this topic. So it’s just about being creative and being able to just go outside the box and be freely with what we want to do.”
“In the beginning, obviously, you’re trying to get the show going. And there’s a lot of hands in the pot giving directions and trying to steer all facets of the show, the look of the show, the feel of the show. And so you take directives from the director’s vision, the producer’s vision, ABC, and then also you have to appease your creative input and the actors as well, because they got to be comfortable on camera,” Morris added. “But it was nice to reach a point where the show, basically, across the board, had legs of its own. We got to just express ourselves creatively and go from our minds to the screen.”
Outside of the world of television, Davis has kept busy by publishing her own comic book entitled I Have a Voice, which was released earlier this year. Morris has numerous projects currently in post-production, including the untitled Nike movie starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.
Black-ish is up for two accolades at the 74th Primetime Emmy Awards, which airs on September 12th.
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