When Viola Davis won an Emmy last week, one of the names she mentioned in her acceptance speech was Meagan Good (pictured). She spoke about how women like Good stood for a whole group of black women in the cut-throat entertainment industry.
This comes at a poignant time in Good’s career because she has been bagging big roles of late. In 2013, she was the lead in the incredible drama Deception and this year she returns as another lead on the new Fox show, Minority Report.
If you remember, there was a film by the same name that starred Tom Cruise which released a few years ago. The premise of the movie was that a new technology had been devised that could predict and stop a crime before it was committed. It was a way to curb crime and save lives, but Cruise’s character discovered that there was a flaw in the system and fought against it.
The TV series takes you through this brief schooling in the first episode so that you get the story’s premise. Soon you are hooked on how the various characters interlink with Good’s character at the centre of it all. Breaking out of her shell – where she’s been typecast as nothing more than just a pretty face – Good stars as cop Lara Vega who has to solve a lingering crime.
While it is great that Good gets to play a big part in the show, there is still a long way to go when it comes to how she delivers. Perhaps it has to do with her pretty-girl looks which Hollywood has milked for so long. We have never seen her as anything else so when she comes up with a serious role like this, we can’t help but wonder how long she can hold out for.
Then again, we can’t blame good looks because the likes of Charlize Theron and Angelina Jolie do just fine.
In fact, as she grows older, Good should model herself around the careers of people like Kerry Washington and Angela Bassett who both look good, but are still able to be convincing in any roles they get.
Minority Report has just started so we will give Good some room to grow and see how far she can take this role.
• Minority Report airs on Tuesdays at 8.30pm on Fox (DStv channel 125) and on StarSat’s channel 131.