THE FIRST LADY Features Multiple Emmy-Nominated Actress Regina Taylor as
Marian Shields Robinson
Regina Taylor, two-time NAACP Image Award winning actress, playwright, and activist, plays the role of Marian Shields Robinson, Michelle Obama’s, mother in the 10-week anthology series THE FIRST LADY, which premiered on SHOWTIME Sunday, April 17.
We are so grateful that she stopped by to sip coffee and talk about her role and stellar career on Coffee Conversations with Greg J.
Each new episode airs on SHOWTIME Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
BACKGROUND
In addition to Taylor, the new anthology drama stars Oscar®, Emmy®, and Tony winner Viola Davis (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), as former first lady Michelle Obama, Oscar and Emmy nominee Michelle Pfeiffer (French Exit) as Betty Ford, and Emmy and Screen Actors Guild winner Gillian Anderson (The Crown) as Eleanor Roosevelt.
“Michelle Obama has always credited her mother as being an inspirational role model,” Taylor said. “Her mother and father were absolute pillars of strength, encouraging her to pursue her dreams, let no one deter her, and not get in her own way. It was crucial for Michelle Obama, as the first Black woman in the White House, to bring along her essential source of strength – her mother, Marian Robinson.”
Taylor said it is a great honor to be working with such an astonishing cast of actors in the widely anticipated series.
Taylor’s first film was the made-for-TV movie Crisis at Central High, starring Joanne Woodward, in which she portrayed Minniejean Brown, one of the first Black students to integrate the Arkansas school system. Taylor next garnered praise for her role as Mrs. Carter, a drug-addicted mother in 1989’s Lean on Me,alongside Morgan Freeman. Other film roles include Spike Lee’s Clockers, Saturday Church, and Losing Isaiah.
More recently, Taylor was seen in the mind-bending Lovecraft Country (Jordan Peele, J. J. Abrams, Mischa Greene); The Wonder Years (Saladin K. Patterson, Lee Daniels, Marc Valez, Fred Savage); Red Line (Ava DuVernay); All Day and a Night (Joe Robert Cole, Jeffrey Wright, Ashton Sanders); Blue Bloods (Tom Selleck); Black List; and Dig.
In yet another tribute to the actress, the Dallas Independent School District is rebuilding L. G. Pinkston High School, where Taylor was a student, and naming the new Fine Arts Department for Regina Taylor.