TV Academy’s Black History Month Panelists on the Importance of Lifting Each Other Up: ‘It’s on Us, Too’
variety.comWilson Chapman editorAs chairman of the Universal Studio Group, Pearlena Igbokwe is the first Black woman to run a major television studio.
But when she got her start, she had no connections in the entertainment industry, little information about how to break into the business and very few mentors to look up too.
One of her first, and biggest, inspirations was Debra Martin Chase, one of the executive producers behind the beloved Brandy-led adaptation of “Cinderella.” “When I first got into the business, one of the people that I saw as a role model of what I could be was Debra Martin Chase,” Igbokwe said Thursday on a virtual panel hosted by the Television Academy. “She was fabulous and fierce and running things back then and I just remember seeing her — and being too scared to go talk to her — but just thinking ‘Wow, okay there’s one person, and if she could do it, then maybe there’s a path for me.'” Today, Igbokwe calls Chase a colleague. “I always say that the fact that we get to work together now is such a privilege for me,” she noted, alluding to “The Equalizer,” which Universal Television produces in association with CBS TV Studio and Chase executive produces.The two trailblazers were joined by “The Gilded Age” executive producer and director Salli Richardson Whitfield and two-time Emmy-winning actor and SAG-AFTRA Foundation president Courtney B.
Vance for “The Journey of Black Professionals in Television,” a panel organized by the Television Academy, in participation with the African American Film Critics Association.
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