GET MILLIE BLACK Couldn’t Exist Anywhere Except Jamaica, Which is Exactly What Creator Marlon James Wanted

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede The new HBO five-part limited series GET MILLIE BLACK begins with a warning of sorts, which surely will only entice viewers. In a voiceover, the title character – played by Tamara Lawrance – sets it up this way: “This is just another story about Jamaica. It won’t add up. It won’t make sense. But like every story about this country, this is a ghost story.” Then a little bit later in the first episode, Millie elaborates: “Sometimes it’s the living that haunt you. Not dead, but gone.” Premiering Monday, Nov. 25 on Crave, GET MILLIE BLACK is a dark drama created and executive produced by Booker Prize-winning Jamaican author Marlon James. It follows an ex-Scotland Yard detective who returns to her native Jamaica for a burbling mixture of reasons – some having to do with her sibling Hibiscus (Chyna McQueen), while others are related to professional drive, with doses of lingering guilt and bitterness thrown in – that even she hasn’t quite figured out yet. Now a member of the Jamaican Police Force, Millie and her partner Curtis (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr) tackle the always emotionally draining missing-persons files. But their lives are changed forever when one of their investigations crosses paths with another case, which just happens to have brought Scotland Yard detective Luke Holborn (Joe Dempsie) to Kingston. “I think one of the things that makes a show unique, or makes any detective show unique, or film, is when you get to the point where you feel a story couldn’t have happened anywhere else,” James explained during a virtual panel session with the cast and creators of GET MILLIE BLACK. “That’s when you know you’re in a good detective show, or a good mystery, when you sense that there’s nowhere else this could have happened.” GET MILLIE BLACK definitely couldn’t take place anywhere except Jamaica. The culture, the language, the buildings, the climate, the troubling history – it’s all on full display. And many of the widespread assumptions and stereotypes about the nation are impactfully challenged. Another significant element for James is the fact that GET MILLIE BLACK is largely focused on a female character who – despite having plenty of past personal traumas that continue to drive her – is largely defined by what she does through her job. “You know, literary fiction has a lot of flaws, and one of the things that’s interesting about genre stories, like detective stories, or sci-fi stories, or romance stories, is that they’re the only genres where women work,” James said. “I don’t know how women in literary fiction eat, because they never work. So part of the thrill of a detective show for me is just watching a female character go to work, and that what she does at work is a huge part of the essence of who she is. I think that’s interesting.” Lawrance was asked about the challenges of playing a character as complex as Millie, who doesn’t always move in a straight-forward, or even logical, path. Viewers’ attitudes and feelings toward Millie will definitely shift more than once as the series progresses. “The moments of her vulnerability, and wanting to re-establish a relationship with a bereft sibling, kind of gave me a lens into her inner world and her deeper motivations, but also the overarching sense of justice, which is also linked to the fact that, you know, she came from an abusive home,” Lawrance said. “So on some level, she’s very motivated by the rights of children, and sort of the ramifications of generational trauma. And so I think that creates a belligerence, where she’s like, ‘I don’t have time to play. I don’t have time to kowtow.’ ” Summing up Millie Black, Lawrance added, “it’s not the kind of character you can play by half. You need to sort of lean in, and not judge her.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv