November is Love Of A Lifetime and last night, and the first movie? Well that movie was Preach, Pray, Love – different from any movie that we’d normally cover. Well that I would. I am not a religious person, but I do have faith. Don’t ask me to explain, because it’s something that isn’t easy to explain. Just like Preach, Pray, Love isn’t easy to explain.
Starring Karrueche Tran and Mark J.P. Hood, the movie is about a, “rapper Charlie Jones crosses paths with Kyrus Owens, a charismatic minister. As their romance blossoms, Owens’ congregation begins to question his commitment to the church, while Charlie struggles to reconcile her edgy public image.”
Sounds simple enough, but it’s not that simple. The movie seems as though it’s about finding God, but in reality it is more than that – it’s about finding ones self. In the movie, Karrueche Tran plays Charlie Jones, a rapper who has just done a year in jail. Over the year, she’s found that she doesn’t want to be the person that she was.
She’s changed and it’s not a matter of who believes that for her. It’s a matter of her believing that herself.
Because the movie feels as though it’s a departure from anything that Tran has done, I wanted to know (as I do with most) why the two took on the roles. Tran said, “For me, just the story itself with it being such a beautiful spiritual love story. For me, I got to challenge myself as an actor, and I had to rap for the first time. That was pretty cool. Also, I love being a part of the Lifetime family, so I was all in.”
Pastor Kyrus is played by Mark J.P. Hood. Hoods answer was more was involved, “It’s really just a beautiful story, tale of two cities, two people from two different lives who really realize that they love each other, and they don’t care what anybody else says about it. I was attracted to that as a son of a pastor, knowing what pastors go through, and knowing that at the end of the day, a pastor is just a man.”
He then continued, “I got to portray the spiritual version of a pastor, and the man version of a pastor in flesh who just saw something he loved, found a connection, and didn’t care what his members said, didn’t care what his friends said. He’s like, “I love her.” That kind of relentless love, I think, is a beautiful thing to see, and I was attracted to being a part of that.”
Relentless love is definitely a good way to describe the love between the two. The movie highlighted a lot of the politics of church. In the movie a lot of the drama of the possibility of Charlie being with the pastor was blocked by the politics of the church. Pastor Kyrus didn’t care that she had been in jail, he didn’t care that people had thought badly about her and her past – he cared about their future.
That was all that mattered to him. But the politics of the church in this movie was something that you couldn’t see past. At least I couldn’t.
While I wasn’t sure if they would be comfortable responding to it, Wood said, “It’s unfortunate. What you said that is the case in many churches. I won’t even say just in Black church, in the infrastructure of church, and that’s in any denomination, Catholic, Christian, it doesn’t matter. People, pastors should be held to this standard. It’s an unfair standard because sometimes they forget that their pastor is their leader, but their pastor is not God. They turn their pastor into God. They put him on a pedestal like he’s Jesus. Then he can’t make any mistakes. He can’t explore love. He can’t do anything they don’t want to see God do. There’s a weird complex and dichotomy there, and you really got to see it play out in our movie. They were going to hold the church down. If I stayed with her, they were going to shut down. They weren’t going to let us get to the next church. They weren’t going to let me get to the next Sunday. They were willing to lose their leader because of this woman.”
And I agreed with everything that he said. It was unfortunate in the movie, because everything that he was trying to do to further the congregation was stifled by the world around them, the politics of the church seemed to overlook the purpose and things that can be learned from faith and being spiritual.
The movie wasn’t just about religion. It did have a strong love story – one that was complex. We even have a love triangle. The Pastor has an inner circle, one member of that being a woman named Suzanne. She was in love with the Pastor, but he was not in love with her. The Pastor was accused of being distracted by shiny pretty things. But was that what it was? Was that his interest in Charlie?
Wood said, “I don’t think he got distracted by a shiny pretty thing, but we have to be clear here. When you look at a diamond, it’s two things. It’s shiny and it’s pretty. When you look at Charlie Mega, you see two things. It’s shiny and it’s pretty. He wasn’t distracted by her. He saw it. She was shiny, she was pretty, and he was attracted, not distracted. From there, they were able to build a relationship. Suzanne saying, “Don’t get distracted by a shiny pretty thing,” really was hurt, internalized anger because she was attracted to Pastor Kyrus. Pastor Kyrus saw her when they met each other, you saw it. They were just over at the church. She was there trying to do her thing. He was trying to help her get somewhere. She was pretty, of course, but he didn’t get distracted by it. Suzanne internalized it incorrectly because of her own desires.”
The movie is a road – a road where two people find themselves, but also find each other. The movie is a powerful testament to finding ones self and growing. In the movie their is a scene in church where Trans character stands up and walks to the front of the church ready to accept her relationship with God and build it. It was a powerful moment in the film.
When I asked about it feeling so real, Tran said, “I think for her and for me, keeping that scene very real and very grounded, because that is a big part of the movie, a big emotional part, and shifting gears for Charlie. When I was filming that scene, it’s weird because it felt so natural. The tears and the emotion just came because I put myself in that setting, and I thought about Charlie. All these things are happening. Her life is crumbling. She’s wilding out, she’s drinking, she’s smoking, she’s doing all this crazy stuff. She went to jail. What is the meaning of life? What is happening? What do I want from life? She’s maturing right before her very own eyes and in front of the viewers too. In that moment, it’s her, as she’s watching Pastor Kyrus up there, it’s her having that monologue and her thinking about her life and just having all these questions about what she wants.”
Tran then continued, relating it to her personal life, “I feel I took a lot of that from my own personal life too, because we all have those thoughts. For me, it was important to make sure that people felt that it was real. Even though the church didn’t feel or didn’t see that it was real, the fact that it was real for Charlie and that was shown, I think is big for people to be able to relate to. Because you can believe in whatever you want and whatever you say, but people will always doubt you or have something to say. As long as you stay true to who you are and to your feelings and what you believe, go for it. Do what you strongly feel because there’s always going to be people who are attacking you, people who are saying certain things, but if it’s what you believe, it’s what you believe. Charlie really believed that she wanted a change, and she wanted better, and that God brought her and Pastor Kyrus in each other’s lives, and they crossed paths for a reason.”
Change is out there. It’s ready and waiting for us. Preach, Pray, Love airs on Lifetime.
