'The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat' director talks connection through film, beginnings

LOS ANGELES -- Born and bred in Mississippi to a mother who loves movies, Tina Mabry, director of "The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat," fell in love with filmmaking when shown the medium's ability to connect her with her mother and the world at large.

"Because she grew up in the Jim Crow South, you had these films, like 'Imitation of Life,' that she would get on the balcony and see over and over and over again," Mabry said. "Films started a conversation. They let me start to really have a talk with my mom outside of what was going on on that screen."

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Mabry connected with On The Red Carpet Storytellers Spotlight to discuss bringing friendship, representation and love to the screen for others as filmmakers once did for Mabry's family.

The director came to the story of "The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat" in an unorthodox way. Hollywood standout Gina Prince-Bythewood, known for "Love and Basketball" and "The Woman King," wrote the original adaptation of the book into a screenplay. She then gave it to Mabry, confident in the director after seeing her work on the 2009 film "Mississippi Damned" and reading some of Mabry's TV pilot work. From reading the book and Bythewood's script, Mabry knew it was the project for her.

"I saw myself," Mabry told Blake. "I saw my granny, I saw my aunts, I saw my friends. I saw all those things in those really layered deep, complicated, nuanced characters."

Feeling such a strong connection to the material, Mabry found herself getting emotional in her director's pitch to Searchlight Pictures.

"I cried in the middle of the pitch, and I was just certain, 'Well, this is not going to be a job that you got,'" Mabry shared. "I'm going to have to call Gina and say, 'Sorry sis, I completely screwed the pooch with that interview,' and I'm going to lose the job. By the time I walked from the Fox lot to my car, my agent called me and said, 'Congratulations, you landed the gig.'"

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Upon securing the deal, Mabry went full speed ahead with her vision for this proud, Black woman-led story. She knew she wanted to focus on three things: friendship, love, and a sense of found family. To her, that's the core of the film's journey - a love story told through women's friendships.

"Can I specifically tell that story through a lens that is going to be able to not just tell the black and the white of a friendship, but look at the gray and complexity of it?" Mabry asked herself. Upon its release, the film reached the No. 1 most watched spot on Hulu.

Despite her successes, Mabry struggled with feeling invisible in her career, like she needed to seek validation from others to cement her work, especially in trying to navigate a harsh and competitive studio system. Over time, she's learned that it's a combination of sourcing validation from within oneself and finding her own love story through a group of supportive people to lean on when insecurities creep in, to find the map of her own story and seek out her community for guidance.

"I think it's a really good indication of how we should look at life," Mabry said. "And that's the beautiful thing about the Supremes to me, that it's more than a film. It's us."

"The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat" is available to stream now on Hulu or Disney+.

Andres Rovira and Jason Honeycutt contributed to this report.

Disney is the parent company of Searchlight Pictures, Hulu, Disney+ and this station.