Darrell Britt-Gibson & Arsema Thomas On Hulu's ‘She Taught Love'

Source: Robin L Marshall / Getty

If you believe love can be taught, you’ll enjoy Andscape and Hulu’s latest romantic film, “She Taught Love,” starring Arsema Thomas and Darrell Britt-Gibson.

Gibson, who also wrote the film, plays Frank, a seasoned actor looking for his next big non-stereotypically “Black” role. Frank, who seems almost always to be screwing up, meets Mali, played by Arsema Thomas, a hard-working sports agent who’s currently in the biggest fight for her life due to a cancer diagnosis.

In this Black love story, two characters meet in the middle as they search for what life means to them in the present.

Like any romance, Frank and Mail experience many challenges. HelloBeautiful’s Social Media Manager, Char Masona, talked to Gibson and Thomas about their characters’ ups and downs, their on-screen chemistry, whether love can truly be taught, and more.

HB: A few times while watching Hulu’s “She Taught Love,” I was like, ‘Mali, girl, you’re a boss. You need to be taking care of yourself and not dealing with this man.’ What do you think it was about Frank that kept her coming back?

Arsema Thomas:  I think when you are dealing with a lot of big issues, sometimes the mind just needs a distraction. It’s at times like when you talk about men, but like we could be talking about politics or what’s happening in the world. But it kind of eases the mind to fixate on something that’s fun.

Frank represents this ultimate playfulness she’s forgotten, and he challenges her. [He] meets her at the same pace because she constantly feels like she’s going faster than everybody else, and she has to bring people up to speed with her. He’s running right next to her, so that becomes this ultimate type of first friendship and then partnership. So I think that’s why she’s like, ‘There’s something here that I’ve never seen before, and I want to find out more.’

Darrell Britt-Gibson: I think it is a bit of [him being] a distraction and the bigger issues she has going on in her life. She has been so regimented in her life with her career and with everything that she does. And then here comes sort of firecracker oddball [who] sort of doesn’t fit the mold of what she’s probably used to being with.

That’s really interesting to me, the idea [that] opposites do attract. I mean, it is a real thing. If you allow yourself to be in a relationship that is a distraction, you could end up falling in love because you don’t realize that it happens. You just wake up one day, and you’re like, ‘I  love this person.’ you just sort of keep going with it. I think a lot of people in life are with somebody who was probably a distraction at first, and now it’s like the greatest thing that ever happened to them.

HB: Darrell, what I will say about Frank is that I didn’t like him for a lot of the movie, but then I didn’t hate him. There was something really lighthearted and fun about him. So, when you were writing his character, how did you make him so complex?

DBG: I don’t like films that make heroes too good and villains too bad because people are complicated. They are nuanced, they are layered. And I think that with him, by any stretch of the imagination, he is a perfect person. He’s not. He is flawed, but we are all flawed. She’s able to sort of find the beauty in his flaws.

If you keep him being one-way, he has to have an arc, right? Characters have to have arcs. So if you love him all the way through the movie, you didn’t really feel anything, right? Or if you hated him through the whole movie, you’re like, ‘I didn’t feel anything either.’ You have to get that sweet spot.

He has an arc when you are like, ‘I don’t like him,’ but then you’re like, ‘Do I love this?’ You have to go on this ride with him as a person, and I think he’s figuring it out. As are we.

One of my friends who’s a writer said the greatest thing ever. She said, ‘Characters in films don’t go from A-Z, they go from A to A.1, A to A.2.’ I think we’re trying to write characters [going] from A-Z. People do not change overnight, anytime. He’s still learning that, and that’s where you find this part of their relationship. It’s a beautiful place for them to be.

HB: Mali is fighting for her life, literally. But they both kind of just hopped into the relationship with each other. And I want to know, as actors, how did you both trust each other on set?

Source: Robin L Marshall / Getty

DBG: You get in [Arsema’s] presence, and it just engulfs you, and you’re just like you’re fully ready to be present in the thing with her. It wasn’t even like a moment. There probably was a moment if I were to sit and really think about it. But, she is so open, so vulnerable, and so allowing [for] something to happen, whatever it may be, and that’s why I think it shows on screen.

AT: I was lucky because it probably would have taken me longer if [Darrell] had not written it because that was my first introduction to Darrell. It was like I read this script, and I was even a little bit taken aback because I have always thought if a film is centered around a Black woman, it should be created by a Black woman, but I was reading this, and I was like, it feels like somebody who deeply empathizes with what it means to inhabit our bodies.

I realized that real progress and change mean our ability to empathize, regardless of what each other looks like. The moment I realized that was kind of the foundation of Darrell, I was like, ‘Oh, I can do this with him.’ His taking on whatever notes that I had meant that he trusted me to fully form Mali with him.

And then I was like, well then it is only fair that I let him in as well because that’s how you have a partnership: Both [parties] have to give something. And I think there’s always a risk, but I, for some reason, didn’t even think about the risks at all when it came to this. This felt like such a good landing space. It felt like everybody that was part of the team, from our director, Nate, to the producers.

Everybody understood what the priority was and I think that came from it, like being something that he really, really pounded into with everything, so it made it almost something that I felt that I should give and was happy to as well.

HB: I loved the juxtaposition of Molly healing Frank while she was also sick. I want to know your thoughts on the power of love in healing and how you think this film will display that.

AT:  I come from a medical background, and I think about the fact that a lot of things come from the inside out. If you give yourself the willpower, it will happen. And I think there’s something really potent when it comes to love and support that, and it made her feel strong enough to not only fight for herself but realize she’s fighting for something else there. 

There was a future she could start to envision that was different than the work and monotony she had most of her life. So, having that opportunity of difference, I think, is the reason why you see her go for things in a different way than she did before she met Frank. 

DBG:  I think there are two things that I believe can heal [mostly] anything if you really immerse yourself in them and I think that’s laughter, [and] that’s love. With these characters, they laugh a lot together, and they really do love each other. She is healing him because he’s so broken, and the whole movie revolves around her. Every character just sort of leans on her, and that just feels like what Black women, what ya’ll have to deal with every day. It’s like the Black women are at the bottom of the totem pole, which makes no sense. But maybe they’re only there strictly to hold the rest of the world up because if anyone else was down there, we would have crumbled a long time ago.

It’s called “She Taught Love,” it’s not “He Learned Love.” It’s about how her love for everybody in the film. It heals everybody, and it can heal everybody. That’s the power of love, especially love from a Black woman. If you’ve got love from a Black woman, then you are like Superman.

Mali was working [hard], and she didn’t want to burden her parents [with her illness]. Do you have a message for Black women, who carry so much on their backs, about asking for help when it’s needed?

DBG: I’ll never speak for ya’ll. I’m trying to be in a space where I stand beside y’all, behind y’all, in front of ya’ll, wherever ya’ll want me to be. 

The more Black people that run your sh*t-it’s gonna be good. I promise you, the greatest leaders I’ve ever met in my lifehave been Black women; that’s just a fact. I came from a Black woman who’s like a superhero to me, and being around Arsema, and throughout my life, it’s like the film only works because of her, and if we don’t have her, then we’re probably not doing this interview right now. 

I’m probably walking around the street somewhere like, ‘Man, I don’t know what to do with my life.‘ The message I want to send is [to] let Black women lead films and television. People will show up for them, and they will carry your thing farther than anything else you could have imagined. Black women who look like Arsema, you need that. 

AT: I don’t think the message is for Black women because that’s just the position we’ve all been put in. I think the message is for everybody else to seek and help the Black women in their lives. The moment when we realize that someone will catch us, we’ll relax. It’s the fact that there’s no reliability, there’s no safety net. The message would be for everyone else surrounding them. The environment is the thing that makes us this way.

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