In what undoubtedly was a black woman ahead of her time, the character Nola Darling (played by Tracy Camilla Johns) was introduced to the world by Spike Lee as the lead in his very first film, 1986’s She’s Gotta Have It (Lee also faced some pushback for a problematic rape scene in it, a scene he later said he regretted).
Now, for the millennium, Darling is back and being reprised by the gorgeous DeWanda Wise, who, like her foresister from the ’80s, is a 20-something artist who dates and juggles three very different men while living in New York City.
They are: Greer Childs, a self-absorbed model; Mars Blackmon, an aspiring rapper by night and bike courier by day (played by Lee in the original); and Jamie Overstreet, the most “normal” of them all (until that problematic sex scene in the first film).
Yes, Miss Nola Darling is back, and living in the same Fort Greene, Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of the original black-and-white film, but with the nuances of Fort Greene today (see gentrification, which Lee has railed against for some time).
On Friday Netflix released a beautiful trailer of the series, in which Nola Darling proclaims herself a “sex-positive, polyamorous pansexual who doesn’t believe in monogamy.”
We can’t wait to see what this iconic character has become in all of her black-girl glory.
She’s Gotta Have It will debut on Netflix on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 23).