Gabrielle Union brought her "Being Mary Jane" fabness to Miami Beach this past weekend for a press junket at the Architectural Digest OASIS event during Art Basel. We've got the cute looks she rocked, plus what she told us about why shows like hers are absolutely needed for Black and Latina women....
This past weekend at the The James Royal Palm Hotel in Miami, TheYBF.com chopped it up with fab chick Gabrielle Union about her new show "Being Mary Jane". And if you caught the original TV movie premiere this past summer, you're twiddling your thumbs just like us, anxiously waiting for the January 2014 series premiere.
In a little black dress with shoulder cut outs and multi-colored strappy heels, Gabby Union kept it effortlessly cute as she promoted her upcoming BET show "Being Mary Jane" over the weekend.
The 41-year-old actress dished to us, TheYBF.com, about what her dynamic character that we can all relate to is all about:
[Mary Jane] is the news anchor at a struggling network and is trying to fight the good fight. She's putting out hard hitting stories that affect the community in a good way, inspiring people, but she butts heads with her producer and one of her best friends, Kara, who is more ratings driven and trying to save our jobs basically. She has her family life with her mother that has Lupus, her father's growing a little dissolution, and her older brother lives at the house with the parents....and his kids who are having kids. The little brother is selling weed, she's got her love life which is in shambles and all over the place. She is making all kinds of bad decisions. Then she has her life with her friends. She is basically struggling to have it all and failing miserably. Kind of like the rest of us that want it all and don't let ourselves off the hook when we are not perfect and sh* t happens."
So which similarities could someone like Gabby -- who seemingly has the perfectly charmed life with a huge career and baller boyfriend to boot -- have to her character? She revealed to us:
The desire to be perfect but falling short. Not giving myself a break in terms of, like, it's ok to not get it right all the time. It's ok to fall short. Certainly in my youth, I didn't always make the best romantic decisions. A woman searching for it all and trying to figure it out.
And yes, Gabby says dramas like "Being Mary Jane" (she's also a big fan of her friend Kerry Washington's "Scandal") are necessary to balance out all those catty black & latina-focused reality shows.
Oh my goodness. Not only do women need it, you need to see that women can work together, they can be a team together, they can have a friendship together and they can have conflict but conflict resolution doesn't have to be disrespectful and crazy. We show conflict resolution that is compassionate and respectful. Black Women and Latinas need to see ourselves accurately on television without it being this, you know violent unfortunate cat fight & crabs in a barrel.
But the reality is that reality TV is not real. I know a lot of these women and that's not who they really are. They are edited and produced in a way. And the conflict is manufactured and we all are sort of consuming it as real. We start to believe that black women can't be friends with other black women and that black women can't be friends with Latinas and that's not the everyday truth.
After the press junket, Gabby changed it up for thr reception into this little sky blue number that we're loving. And she posed it up with Tracy Mourning, BET's Stephen Hill and more.
"Being Mary Jane" returns to BET for a full season on January 7th at 10p EST. We're so there!
Photos: Wireimage/Gabby's IG, Miami Correspondent: Adrienne Fleming