She’s Got The Juice

Melissa L. Williams

Words by Rashod Davenport Photos by Antwon Maxwell

“I was always performing around the house,” actress Melissa L. Williams laughs. “I was always putting on shows, every family gathering. One day I misplaced my key, got locked out of the house, and my older neighbor let me in her home and put on Shirley Temple until I was able to get back in my house. And she (Shirley Temple) was doing everything that I had already loved to do, which is singing, dancing, and acting. And I told myself “If this little girl is my age doing the same things I love, I can too.”

That was the spark Melissa needed to push her into the challenging industry that we call entertainment. She would tell her mother her dream and with full support was enrolled in dance classes so that she could learn how to better utilize the skills that she saw used in the musical movie. She joined the local theater as a part of the youth company and decided that if there was ever an open stage, she was going to be on it.

Melissa is now the star of the Tyler Perry hit series Ruthless, airing exclusively on BET+, as well as a recurring role on its parent show The Oval, which airs on BET. Although it seems like the Oklahoma City native just popped up on the scene, she has been acting all of her life. Her first feeling of being a star was when the local newspaper, The Daily Oklahoman, recognized her for her performance in the Little Shop of Horror play that her community theatre produced. As she says with a laugh, “you couldn’t tell me anything.” 75

Her attendance at Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia was in a roundabout way prompted by the entertainment industry. Melissa was introduced to the university after watching the movie, Drumline, and instantly became inspired by the camaraderie of HBCU life. She wanted to attend to major in theatre at a Historically Black University in hopes of acceptance and “black love” as she puts it. “After researching online, I really thought there was a real school called Atlanta A&T” she laughed .“I didn’t know” She jokingly tells the story… she later found out the movie was filmed at the Atlanta University Center (AUC) comprised of Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, Morris Brown College, and Spelman College.

“I was accepted to Clark, so I set off for my life’s journey,” Melissa explains. “Going to Clark had a major impact on me and my life. Being in a different environment and being surrounded by the culture that is ATL helped me to grow. And to be an actress you have to grow and evolve daily. Clark helped shape me into the woman and actress I wanted to be by opening up new perspectives which allowed my dreams to know no boundaries and truly live our motto of “Find a way or make one.”

Once on campus, Melissa joined the CAU Players theater program run by the late amazing actress Carol Mitchell Leon and felt her first confirmation while playing the role of Carmen in the stage production on FAME. After the production concluded, she decided to start planting herself in more plays and got into doing background work. For Melissa, background work was a pivotal part of her development. She understood this was her up close and personal opportunity to closely watch lead actors and taking notes on the feedback that they would get while on set. She was a sponge. She was able to immerse herself in the craft that she loves... and be paid to be there. After a few years, Melissa took the “Hollywood leap” and moved to Los Angeles to take advantage of the opportunities at hand. Let’s just say that leap was one of her first big life lessons.

“I had to research everything,” Melissa says passionately. “People need to understand that they don’t give you any type of manual when you up and say you want to move to LA for your career. So first of all, I was like, WHOA, this is three times the rent in Atlanta. What’s really happening? So for the first year, I was working because I didn’t understand the magnitude of making the move to LA. I did a lot of research. I found so many helpful resources. But at the end of the day, that’s perseverance. I was sending like 10 emails, blind emails a day, just sending out an email with my headshot. I don’t even think I had a (actors) reel at the time. I was doing that along 76 with submitting myself. I was my own agent on Actors Access and LA Casting. And that’s how I got my first audition, which was for The Game. It was crazy. Everyone thinks “boom, now I need an agent”. No, you have to do everything on your own when you start off. Go be your own agent, be your own manager, be your own personal trainer, be your own nutritionist, be your own stylist, your own hairstylist, and makeup artist, like, come on, you got to get on YouTube. That’s where I learned a lot of stuff.”

Melissa would spend this part of her transition in what she considered a “ying and yang moment.” To understand what’s “good”, you have to know “bad”. To appreciate blue skies, you must know gray ones. They both have to exist. Knowing the difference allows a person to create a better mindset. It’s what we would compare to character development. We are all in a constant state of learning and when you are creating a better version of yourself, your family, your circumstance, you have to know what you are creating from. In that state of learning, Melissa began listening to a lot of motivational speakers, with her favorite being Les Brown.

“In this town and any other town, you have to push yourself because you remember your goal,” Melissa says after taking an extended pause. “I mean, I listen to Les Brown a lot and he says whatever your vision is, write it down and look at it three times a day. And that’s what I was doing. I would write every day on this little notepad. “I Melissa L. Williams will consistently be a working actress.” I just had it in my mindset. I kept feeding my mind with what I wanted and literally was able to cross off the things that I wrote down. So my vision board was more of just words than pictures. Some people are visual. I think, for me, seeing the words every day was subliminally making me do certain things like, ‘okay, I’ve got to save for this. I need to make sure to do that. I’ve got to blah blah blah.’ you know? That’s what success is to me. It’s literally writing a goal and going after it, doing vision boards for some, but you have to write it down. You have to keep your mind fed with positivity. Especially if you’re choosing entertainment. Because it’s up and down. And it’s fair that way. Because it’s a time for people to win over here and maybe not for the people over there, but then it switches. So it’s always very fair... if you pursue it with the right attitude.”

Melissa’s tenacity and attitude would land her an audition at Tyler Perry Studios. While it wasn’t her first time working with the entertainment powerhouse director and actor, it was her first time stepping onto the new lot as a potential supporting actress. The role on the new series ‘The Oval’ was for Denise Truesdale, a woman who owned a clothing boutique while secretly having an affair with

the president of the United States as well as her twin sister, Ruth, who was newly in a cult and would kidnap her daughter sending a family into a spiral. The role had her noticed by Tyler who then asked her about a spinoff revolving around Ruth and the cult.

“I immediately said, “YES,” Melissa says as she bursts out laughing. “I don’t know what the script looks like, but I want to do it. This is an opportunity to do something very different because I was always typecast because of my look. Casting agents would think ‘she can be the mean girl, she can be the girlfriend, or the crazy ex,’ like it was always the same for me. So when this was brought to my attention, I dove on it.”

The new series, RUTHLESS, has just premiered its second season on BET+. While filming about a cult, Melissa was given the same task as the rest of the cast. Tyler had them do their homework on cults by watching a few documentaries. Melissa was intrigued and wanted to know more about how these people ended up in those circumstances. She couldn’t believe what she found and how these cult cells were right under her nose the entire time.

“It’s jarring,” Melissa says with a tone of sadness. “I watched a lot of YouTube interviews with real women who were in cults and they were just lost. The things they said they fell for, I feel for them, it’s sad. It’s unfortunate. People relate to our show because we have all felt misled. It could be by a boyfriend, it could be by a friend, a family member, a celebrity, or an athlete. People who follow people that intensely end up getting let down because we are all human. Nobody’s perfect.

However, once you start making somebody perfect, that’s when it’s time to checkout and tap back into yourself. And I’m just glad that I’m able to work on a project that brings so much light to this topic. Tyler has taken this leap of faith on a subject that is just speaking to so many fears and I just hope it continues to become more of a topic to talk about and actually investigate versus sweeping under the rug like we’ve been doing.”

Being the main character on RUTHLESS has been a dream come true for Melissa. What makes it more profound is that she is filming on the brand new Tyler Perry Studio Lot which houses the office building named The Dream Building. And that’s exactly what it is for Melissa. For Melissa to pull into those gates, she’s literally living a dream. That’s where she had her initial callback and where her dream of auditioning in front of Tyler and being cast by him at that moment came true. Needless to say, it’s surreal for her. Tyler Perry is the first Black person to not only own a production studio but own one of the largest production studios in the country. Unfortunately, with all things COVID-19 related, she has celebrated her success a little differently. However, that can be seen as a bit of a blessing in the storm.

“It’s been fortunate for me with everything going on,” Melissa explains. “I’ve been able to do a lot of soulsearching. And a lot of really fine-tuning. I’ve been learning so much about myself. I’ve been talking to my family for hours on end. Just doing things that I feel like I would not have been able to do had the world been open.”