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« Regina Taylor's The Unit Blog
Looking Forward to New Journeys
We wrapped shooting in April. We then had two-and-a-half months off. We actors go our separate ways to discover ourselves in different roles.
Michael Irby headed off to New Orleans to shoot a jazz movie featuring Wynton Marsalis. Demore Barnes went back home to Canada and worked on his own film project. Abby Brammell traveled to Bangkok, where her tattooed blues-singing husband was making his acting premiere in a Sylvester Stallone movie.
I returned to Dallas to start a home-renovation project. My aunt Virginia currently lives in the atomic ranch-style house as I go back and forth to L.A. I'm moving in another aunt who has a disabled daughter by the end of the year and wanted to make the home wheelchair accessible — ramps, wider doors, a new bathroom — so I find a contractor who says they can knock the job out in three weeks. In my mind I tack on a couple of extra weeks, thinking I'll still have plenty of time to sit on a beach in Tahiti during the remaining hiatus and "renew."
I use my time in Dallas during the renovation to reconnect with family and to finally go through my mother's belongings — her paintings, dress patterns of clothes she designed, her writings, her baptismal scarf... things she held on to. As I am excavating, I discover things that I never knew about her when she was alive. Secret desires and fears are uncovered in the sifting through of things that remain. As I grow older I am always surprised in how I am growing more and more like her. Or I am in less denial — it is an ongoing dialogue between mother and daughter that continues to evolve. Weeding through my own things to clear some space for my Aunt Rose and her daughter Rosalind, I find myself reconnecting with myself at different stages in my life. College photos to elementary finger paintings, high school report cards. I even find "Gigi." My mother, wanting me to have a doll that looked like myself, couldn't find any brown-skinned dolls in the stores. She made a brown rag doll — I named her "Reggie Gianni" when I was 6. As an adult holding Gigi, I try to find the child she was made for.
The two-and-a-half months pass too fast. The contractors who claimed in their ad that they would do it for me has done it to me. They are still — months later, to this day — working on this three-week renovation project. I don't get to travel to the mystical island of Tahiti but I'm grateful to have time-traveled through ancient remains in Dallas. I head back to L.A. stripped down and freshly varnished, clearer from this trip.
We come back to the Santa Clarita Studios. Scott Foley returns glowing — newly married. Audrey comes back glowing, newly pregnant. Dennis Haysbert returns shining — bald and lean having dropped over 20 pounds. He comes back ready to kick some butt as Jonas Blane.
I am at the series-premiere party last Tuesday with a rowdy group of cast members, crew, staff and friends, at Rick-the-editor's great '70s tri-level house in Granada Hills. The Unit is back (minus our rocking theme song), tight, fast and powerful as ever. We're gathered around holding camouflage plates of food and drinks talking back to the action on the 64-inch screen. The ladies all swoon out loud whenever Jonas appears.
Rick-the-editor's house is very eclectic. Walls are filled with photos and objects from various projects and travels. Rick is a baseball fan. An extensive baseball collection sits encased off the playroom on the second level. In the dining room Rick's wife has a photo of a beautiful swan-necked woman, a distant relative who wrote Imitation of Life. Written in the '30s, it was twice made into movies in Hollywood. I tell her it was one of my favorite movies growing up. They'd play this movie every summer in Dallas and we'd all gather around my grandmother's 24-inch black-and-white TV, talking back to this melodrama about a tragic light-complectioned mulatto denying her own identity until her large, dark-skinned mother dies. At the funeral Mahalia Jackson sings, "Soon We'll Be Done with the Troubles of this World." The daughter breaks down and finally claims her mother and her past. Folks around the TV would be shaking their heads and tsking — "Umph, too late." The movie made us laugh and weep.
Every time we would see a black face on the black-and-white everyone would call everyone they knew. Everyone would gather in front of whoever's TV and put our faces close to watch — Sidney Poitier films, Bill Cosby in I Spy, Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek, the secretary on Mannix. And oh yes, Di: Diahann Carroll. We were so proud to see them — to see reflections of ourselves. Usually they were single individuals. We saw little or nothing about their families or their communities. Their characters and plotlines had little or no mention of race. But we understood the underpinning message of their presence in the times we were living through. They played human beings in human situations with which everyone could identify.
Forty years later, Jonas Blane is the only black lead in a drama on national television. Jonas and Molly Blane are the only black couple in a drama on national TV. The Unit is not about race. It tells the story of human beings under stressful situations dealing as human beings. Their characters are universal and black.
I find myself in the role of Molly Blane, a character that when I was a child I could not have imagined to have existed on TV.
I try to instill in Molly the characteristics of those who raised me and helped to shape my life. Those strong, resolute, regular colored women who sometimes found themselves humanly fragile and very extraordinary in the face of life's storms. I try to keep her humanity shining through for anyone who presses close to the screen searching for recognition. Stepping into this new season... I look forward to the journeys.
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Sep 28, 2007 2:25 PM
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Welcome Back! 
You were missed.
Roobaby
Ft. Lauderdale
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Sep 28, 2007 4:31 PM
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Regina,I just discovered your blog and I'm blown away by your writing. I was looking for the tv blog of The Unit and it wasn't on the list of reviewed shows for the week, so I set about to find out why and found you. How wonderful your blogs are! I was with you for Thanksgiving with "my" family; so very real.
I have loved you since "I'LL Fly Away" and I have always felt your sensitive side. I will keep reading and you keep writing.
Tell Dennis he is not only beautiful, he makes me proud, as do you and I have allstate) Mrs. E.
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Sep 29, 2007 5:07 PM
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Welcome back! I am really looking forward to having you and the rest of the cast in my living room.
Thanks for the hard work you all do to make The Unit such a pleasure to watch.
Thanks especially for giving your characters, the women, men and children of the military, such a feeling of humanity and integrity.
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Sep 30, 2007 6:12 PM
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Beautiful blog, Regina. You are such a lyrical writer. I'm glad The Unit is back on TV ... and the season opener ROCKED (I missed the opening theme song as well).
Enjoy your season!
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Sep 30, 2007 9:46 PM
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in this program i am afraid that i have become colorblind. i was reared in a predjudicial home and have carried some of it with me but the Blane's have become my favorite tv family as has The Unit leaped to the top of my TV favorites.
KEEP IT GOING......................
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Oct 1, 2007 6:14 PM
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Regina,
I never miss your show because I record it if I'm not around to watch. You guys all do a great job, you really do and The Unit and NCIS are my favorite shows...oops, forgot CSI Miami--anyway, I always thought, "Wow, this guy here that is doing this insurance commercial is really someone special, I wonder if anyone else will notice this man's potential". I am so glad you and Dennis are doing well in your roles, you deserve good things.
Lynda
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Oct 1, 2007 7:27 PM
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Regina I am so happy you are continuing your blog this season as was pointed out already apparently there will not be a blog done by a tv guide editor this season.
Thank Regina for sharing your personal and professional life with us.
I have been a fan of yours since I'll Fly Away and of Dennis since Now & Again and later 24. It is wonderful for me as an African American to see an African American man in a leading role in a Network tv drama to see a strong black married couple in a tv drama. The Unit and Lincoln Heights on ABC Family are the only drama shows I know of with black actors in the lead roles.
I enjoyed last weeks eppy and Dennis is looking mighty fine and sexy with Jonas new look. I look forward to this season and how the the Unit will once again be strong and united in fighting for their country.
Again thank you for taking timeout from you no doubt busy schedule to share your thoughts with us!
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Oct 2, 2007 8:58 AM
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Love your blog. It has the same strength, warmth, sensitivity and feeling as your acting does. I LOVE The Unit. Have been a fan since it's pilot show. But I never think of you and Jonas as black, nor do I think of any of the other cast as white, or hispanic. Color has nothing to do with talent, and I'll say he's a great actor, she's a great actress, and never pigeonhole anyone. Discovered this years ago when I became close to the manager of one of my company's outside offices. Lovely man. Somone said "how does it feel having a black office manager" and I was puzzled and said what? Who? NEVER saw him as black, just as my friend, Ralph. I think more people should be color blind. Long may you blog, and may The Unit remain on TV for as long as you all want it to.
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Oct 2, 2007 11:09 AM
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Regina, thank you for your synopsis of the cast's summer activities. The part 2 of the season premier last night was the typical "surprises and gotchas" I've come to expect from "The Unit". It is indeed a fast moving show and it's amazing that the writers and editors can pack so much into your short 40 minutes of actual show time. My only complaint is the writer's seemingly incessant habit of showing main characters in a less than honorable light. Specifically, the characters Max and Abby play. I just wish that your writers had the guts to show that not everyone acts "human", that there are honorable people out here in America and there are husbands and wives that really don't act "like everyone else who cheats" or caves under pressure even under the horrendous pressure they put Max and Abby's characters. I watch very little TV anymore for those and other reasons. As (old) ex-Army, I appreciate the discipline portrayed by your characters but I also wish for more honor displayed in the private lives of the characters. I began watching "The Unit" after NBC caved and canceled "E Ring" and your show did not disappoint. Thanks to you and your fellow cast members and crew for a great show!
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Oct 3, 2007 3:46 PM
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Regina you still have the same wonderful smile that you had when we were in school.I know longer live in dallas but go home every chance I get.And I think the unit is wonderful I watch it every week. God Bless and keep you. Jessie W.
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Oct 3, 2007 4:19 PM
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Hey Regina, remodeling can really be an extended hassle- hope it wasn't the guy i recommended was in Dallas 2 months also and saw you were having work done - hope it comes out well - spent time with my moms sister who had wonderful family stories from long ago - of course I taped them - you'll have to hear them sometime - stay busy and stay strong! sm
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Oct 5, 2007 2:39 AM
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Regina, U R loved. I'm so grateful that I have lived long enough to see an Af-Am couple (I'm not Af-Am)in leading roles in prime-time drama. Every week I cheer on The Blane's & their extended family, the cast of The Unit. Your blogs are wonderful and I catch myself nodding in agreement as you revisit growing into the wonderful woman you are; we could be best friends. Make time to find yourself on a beautiful beach in Tahiti; you certainly deserve to do so. Keep those blogs coming...they're great!! MJ
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Oct 11, 2007 2:15 PM
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Thank you for sharing with us it is so nice to hear from people involved in a TV show that i really enjoy. The Unit truly is more encompassing than just the guys in the series. You and the other wives truly make it interesting and inspiring to watch. Seeing the adversities that your character has overcome and how you work to keep the wivestogether is truly an awesome work. Hector will be missed i was very sad to see him leave. Hope you have a good summer. Keep us posted when you can.
Live long and prosper.
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Jun 9, 2008 5:20 PM
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