Tag Archives: comedienne

Queen Latifah Plans to Make Changes to her Daytime Talk Show for its Second Season

Queen Latifah is making changes to her daytime talk show.

“Everything at the end of the day comes down to me being myself. My whole goal this year is to be more loose, more playful, more fun, more provocative… it’s having a good old time and being La,”

Queen Latifah

Her first year with ‘The Queen Latifah Show’, which returns this week, provided a lesson in what worked and what didn’t. The show has a new executive producer, Todd Yasui, to steer it.

Celebrities, of course, remain part of the equation. Reese Witherspoon, Toni Braxton, Goldie Hawn, Kristen Bell and Snoop Dogg are among those appearing in week one. The “get” Latifah still is angling for: President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.

During the first season, the 44-year-old singer and actress said, audiences responded to the show’s motivational, upbeat elements, and they’ll be more prominent this time around.

An initiative dubbed “One Step Further” will help empower people to pursue their dreams, she said, with a segment Wednesday focused on children in Camden, New Jersey.

“Queen Screen” will beam Latifah via big-screen to public venues such as malls, surprising people with both the host and prizes. “The High Note” is a recurring segment in which Latifah, guests and studio audience members share good news for a cheery ending to the hour.

Her unique status as a pioneering rapper is key to another goal.

“While I have a show, I can help female rappers have a voice and be heard. Hip-hop is such a big genre of music with such big influence that it can change the world. But it can’t change the world without a woman’s voice in it.”

Queen Latifah

“Queen Latifah” is competing for viewers with entrenched series including “Dr. Phil” and “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” as well as newcomer “The Meredith Vieira Show,” hosted by the former “Today” personality.

Bill Carroll, an expert on the syndication market for Katz Media, said “Queen Latifah” did “good, not great” in its debut year, trailing “Dr. Phil,” “The Steve Harvey Show” and others in the ratings. Improving its numbers represents a challenge.

“The most difficult thing for any show, even in a second season where there’s some reinvention, is that the audience has already sampled the show. And for the most part, if it’s not in a new time period they’ve already made their decision.”

Bill Carroll

Latifah said she’s ready for battle, with all due respect to her rivals.

“We all know what this (competition) is and we all go hard,” she said. “I wish everybody the best of luck, but I’m focused on making this show a hit and building our audience.”

Queen Latifah

Lesbian Icon: Generation Ellen DeGeneres

Ellen DeGeneres might be one of the most un-supposing heralds of gay pride in the United States. As a comedienne, her humor has always been remarkably lacking in the edgy, mean-spiritedness that almost anyone aspiring to stand-up comedy seemed to think was a need in order to succeed. Ellen’s persona was straight-faced, beneath that warm and insightful—generally likable. She came out as gay in 1997, amidst great controversy and more than a little vitriol. Her television show at that time, a sit-com entitled “Ellen”, ran for a year after DeGeneres’ announcement, and irrepressibly continued to stand for the representation of lesbians in the media. The plot of her show gave her character a girlfriend, and this was aired, as in seen onscreen, during prime time, in a nation and at a time where cultural attitudes that supported such a thing were very much in the minority. The network itself even added a parental advisory to the show for merely kissing.

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In the past fifteen or so years, attitudes have changed. Such a change in so many people, whether great or gradual, did not come from waiting in silence. It took someone like Ellen DeGeneres to break the silence and put herself in the line of fire, and continue to speak up regardless.

DeGeneres currently runs a talk show where she continues to be the one of the primary voices, and the widest-reaching in the nation, when it comes to speaking up against bullying related to gender-orientation, and bias crimes.

This passionate steadfastness has immense value to those who continue to suffer from gender orientation discrimination. At the same time, Ellen naturally maintains a broad appeal to multiple audience demographics interested in a variety of issues and topics. She gave her voice to the scatterbrained fish character Dory in the 2003 animated film Finding Nemo. According to the DVD commentary, that character had been conceived as male until writer-director Andrew Stanton overheard an episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show that his wife was watching.

Lesbian Icon: The Reign of Queen Latifah

The Reign of Queen Latifah – The entertainment industry produces a lot of filler for fads. Names and faces come and go, with the only talent seeming to be just plain luck.

This is not so for Queen Latifah: singer, songwriter, actress, producer (television and records), comedienne, and talk show host. With her skills, talents, and presence, she is a true star.

In the arena of identity politics, too, she has been met with direct aggression and retained gracefulness and class with her own rebuttals. The mid-nineties found Queen Latifah in a musical feud with Foxy Brown, the latter relying mostly on homophobic slurs against the former over the course of several exchanges of “diss album” releases.

la-et-ct-queen-latifahs-talk-show-makes-a-soli-001Latifah continued to enjoy a successful career, in direct defiance of the safe conventions and formulas for success in the entertainment industry. In a culture over-saturated with the appearance of youth or superficial naivety, especially with women; in an industry that elevated slender bodies and reedy voices almost to the exclusion of any diversity. Latifah has been one of the rare and preciously constant reminders of how to appreciate the sight, sound, and presence of a real woman.

Movie musicals saw a revival in popularity at the turn of the millennium, and Latifah with her many talents stepped up to such challenging roles as Mrs. Morton (a morally ambiguous prison warden) in Chicago, and Motormouth Maybelle (the owner of a record shop, and civil rights protestor in 1960’s Baltimore) in Hairspray. The latter lent her powerful voice to not just one but two empowerment ballads, “Big, Blonde, and Beautiful” and “I Know Where I’ve Been”. While the musical genre shifts are a far cry from her records, Latifah so fully embraced the songs and roles and has proven to be versatile in her craft as well as multi-talented.

Queen Latifah’s personal life and sexual orientation does remain a point of persistent speculation. Regardless, we can only be so glad to have such a vocal ally. In May of 2012, during the 29th annual Long Beach Lesbian and Gay Pride Festival in California, Queen Latifah announced to the LGBT community that, “Y’all my peeps. I love you!”