Meagan Good, Pam Grier, and more share the films and TV shows important to their artistic journeys

Kyla Pratt

Call Me Kat actress Kyla Pratt says iconic comedy The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air made quite an impression on her. "It was a show that was hilarious and made you laugh hard, but it really tackled a lot of things that were serious, so it showed me the balance of both sides of entertainment," notes the actress, whose role on The Proud Family as Penny Proud is as meaningful to others as The Fresh Prince was to her.

Pam Grier

Pam Grier didn't watch a lot of television growing up, but she remembers how watching Julia made her feel. Airing on NBC from 1968 to 1971, the show starred Diahann Carroll as a widowed single mother who worked as a nurse. It was the first weekly series to star a Black woman in a role that wasn't stereotypical. "I was impacted by seeing my mom being a nurse as Diahann Carroll was being a nurse," recalls Grier. Though Julia was a groundbreaking television series, what really stood out to Grier was how it showcased the importance of caregivers in society.

Danielle Pinnock

UPN's lineup back in the day definitely made many Black people feel represented, including Ghosts star Danielle Pinnock. "Moesha was my girl!" exclaims Pinnock. "Seeing a teenager like Brandy that looked like me, that had box braids, and journaled in her diary, and boos fawning over her daily gave me life."

Sheryl Lee Ralph's character Dee Mitchell also had a major impact on the actress. "Anytime Sheryl would speak in Jamaican patois on the show, my family and I would cheer at that TV," remembers Pinnock. "Jamaicans barely had any representation in the media and if we did, we were drug-dealing psychics who bobsled. Those small choices Sheryl Lee Ralph made as an actor to include her Caribbean culture in her role made such a massive difference to me and my family." It also made Pinnock feel like she could be on TV one day too.

William Jackson Harper

"Malcolm X was one of the best movies I'd ever seen in my life," shared The Good Place's William Jackson Harper when asked what film or TV show was very important to his journey as an artist. "To this day, it remains one of my top five,"

And for good reason. Harper was particularly moved by the 1992's biopic's powerful performances, including Denzel Washington's portrayal of he human rights activist: "It seemed like he was possessed by the spirit of Malcolm X."

Of course, director Spike Lee gave the film his own flare while still managing to make it feel like a grounded story about a historical figure. As a result, the movie almost felt like a documentary to Harper. "The fact that they blend so beautifully feels so uniquely Black to me," notes the actor. "It feels so unique to Spike Lee as an artist."

Jerrie Johnson

Eve's Bayou, which revolves around the struggles of 10-year-old Eve Batiste (Jurnee Smollett) and her family, had a profound impact on Harlem actress Jerrie Johnson. "It was the first time ever that I got to see a family of Black professionals where the problem wasn't money," Johnson explains of the 1997 movie.

Calling Eve's Bayou "the most poetic Black film" she's ever seen, Johnson was also impressed that the movie featured a talented group of Black actors working under the direction of a Black woman. "There's a certain internal music that a Black woman has that you can see she's putting something on film," she says of writer-director Kasi Lemmons' work. "I think because I am a Black woman, I noticed that."

Kelly McCreary

Grey's Anatomy star Kelly McCreary fondly remembers seeing Lynn Whitfield as Josephine Baker on TV when she was 10 years old in The Josephine Baker Story. "At that age, seeing the richness of a life lived by a Black woman on screen — the triumph, the pain, the glamour, the romance, the self-determination — it struck such a deep chord within me," she recalls. McCreary's imagination was blown "wide open" by "the power of those images," and she yearned "to make both art and history" after seeing it.

Meagan Good

The Other Sister was a film that really hit home for Meagan Good. The 1999 movie follows the ambitious Carla Tate (Juliette Lewis), who aims to live life on her own terms after graduating from a special education boarding school, but her family doesn't believe she is capable of doing that due to her intellectual disability. Good was drawn to Carla's story because it reminded the actress of the loving and protective sibling dynamic she shares with her own brother who also has a learning disability.

Seeing Carla fight to have a boyfriend, go to college, and get her own apartment really resonated with the Harlem star. "The whole movie was about her asserting her independence and saying, 'You can't tell me what I'm capable of,'" says Good, "That movie became one of my favorite movies because it reminded me of my brother. He always surprises me. It's not that I expect anything different, but he is just one of my heroes."

Coco Jones

It's no surprise that Bel-Air star Coco Jones was inspired by The Cheetah Girls. "I loved it because it was all these women of color," shares the actress-singer, who released her debut EP What I Didn't Tell You in November 2022. "They were singing fire songs, hitting that choreo, and they were in a movie. I was like, 'This is the total package!'"

Katori Hall

"In the Mood for Love was a cinematic experience that rocked my world!" exclaims P-Valley creator Katori Hall of Wong Kar-wai's 2000 film, which follows a journalist and his new acquaintance as they begin to fall in love yet resist their feelings to keep from becoming like their unfaithful partners.

From watching the movie, Hall learned that longing could be filled with immense tension and that "the best stories feel like time and space travel all at once." As a result, Hall aims to "feel timely and timeless simultaneously" in her own work today.

"The cinematography — oh, the cinematography," raves Hall. "Lush, lavish, and lyrical with a musical theme that pulled at the heart strings and often rode a slo-mo visual crawl, Kar-wai's masterpiece taught me that substance and style could exist in equal measure."

Akela Cooper

It makes total sense that Akela Cooper, the writer who gave us M3GAN, would be influenced by another irreverent film. The tone of Ernest Dickerson's horror comedy Tales From the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight about an ancient key and the demon who wants it to start the apocalypse was a huge inspiration for Cooper. "Not only did the fun, irreverent B-movie tone of the film influence my work today, but seeing Jada Pinkett-Smith's character not only survive to the end but become the hero was a revelation," shares Cooper. "It showed me that Black people could create and lead horror, and influences my work today."