When Pam Grier found out that Them: The Scare creator Little Marvin was interested in speaking with her for a role, she was nervous. “I didn’t want to put all my emotions on the table, to be squashed and slammed and frayed,” she tells Consequence. “I have anxiety attacks.”
However, she says, Marvin drew her in with “his conversation of craft and ability and passion drew me in. I like horror as he likes horror, and there’s not enough of it.”
Grier’s career has been a fascinating one, from her early days working on Roger Corman B-movies before becoming a screen icon as the blaxploitation hero of Foxy Brown and Coffy. And since that time she’s worked steadily across film and TV, with a late-career renaissance courtesy of Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown giving her a major boost, and high-profile roles in The L Word and This Is Us keeping that going.
Having worked widely across both mediums, Grier feels that there’s no difference between film and TV “when it comes to the acting craft of emotion. The television screen’s just smaller and the film screen is larger, and you take a little bit more time.”
Grier notes that “when I do the work, we’re going to come in under budget because I’m gonna do it right. That’s how I consider my work — like in theater, there is no take two. I’m living it as take one. That’s it. If you wanna do take two with a different color hair or lipstick, whatever, that’s fine, because it’s still going to be take one.”
In the second season of his Prime Video anthology series Them, Grier plays Athena, the mother of an LAPD detective trying to solve a gruesome murder. Grier says Marvin pitched her “this incredible story about not only political discourse and psychological medical issues and paranormal [stuff]. It’s like, wow, that’s a lot.” For, not only does Athena have her own secrets, but the season is set against the backdrop of 1991 Los Angeles — a truly chaotic time following the Rodney King assault and subsequent court case.
“I find it all refreshing. It’s not derivative. It’s not copied. It’s all original,” she says. “I expect Little Marvin to explore even more dangerous edges to take us to — he is that confident and we believe in him. And after seeing this, he took chances that many would not, whether it was budget or money, or script or time, or just confidence. He took us there, and I’m very proud to have worked with him on this piece.”