Suzzanne Douglas
Suzzanne Douglas is an actor, born 1957.
Suzzanne Douglas built a career on playing the woman holding a household together, and she was doing it in film years before television made it her signature. Her breakthrough was Amy Simms in the 1989 dance drama Tap, opposite Gregory Hines and Sammy Davis Jr., which brought her an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture. Tap is not among the credits listed here, but the rest of that period is: Jason's Lyric, The Inkwell and I'll Do Anything all arrived in 1994.
Then came the job most people know. As Jerri Peterson on The Parent 'Hood, the WB sitcom that ran from 1995 to 1999, she was the matriarch of a New York family opposite Robert Townsend, and she gave the show its centre of gravity. Warm, unfooled, funnier the more tired the character became.
The later work is quieter and considerably heavier. She played Angela in How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Cissy Houston in the television film Whitney, and Grace Cuffee in When They See Us, a series that asks its supporting cast to carry enormous grief across very few scenes. Really Love, released in 2020, is among the last credits here. Douglas died in 2021.
Movies (7)
TV (3)
Where to start with Suzzanne Douglas
Go to The Parent 'Hood first. It is where she got to be funny and authoritative in the same breath, and a long sitcom run shows more of an actor than any single film role can.
For the dramatic case, When They See Us is the strongest thing on the list. She appears in a handful of scenes and not one of them is wasted.
Jason's Lyric and The Inkwell are the pair worth watching together, one bruising and one nostalgic, both from the same year. How Stella Got Her Groove Back hands her the best-friend role with rather more spine than that genre usually allows.
Whitney casts her as Whitney Houston's mother, which is a harder assignment than it sounds, and Really Love is the gentlest note to finish on.