http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/08/vice-principals-kimberly-hebert-gregory

Kimberly Hebert Gregory Defends Vice Principals Against Criticism: “It’s About White-Male Entitlement”
For a woman of color, “competing against white men for something is not novel,” says the actress.
by SULAGNA MISRAAUGUST 8, 2016 10:00 AM

From left to right: Danny McBride, Kimberly Hébert Gregory, and Walton Goggins in Vice Principals.
Courtesy of HBO.
Vice Principals stars Kimberly Hebert Gregory as Dr. Belinda Brown, a newly appointed principal whom the titular veeps, Neal Gamby (Danny McBride) and Lee Russell (Walton Goggins), consider their major rival—despite the fact that she’s already got the job they wanted and is oodles better at it than they ever could be. Gregory describes Brown as “a bootstraps, Sheryl Sandberg, leaning-in, multi-tasking American woman,” and a “turnaround lady”—the kind who reads self-help books and goes to lady business conferences (think She Leads Media or Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit).

In the show’s fourth episode, “Run for the Money”—which aired Sunday—Gregory’s character takes center stage. She’s dealing with the literal ashes of her house (which Gamby and Russell burned down, though she doesn’t know that . . . yet), as well as her frustrations with her new job. “I think Episode 4 is that moment when she’s like, ‘Either you’re going to burn in the ashes or you’re going to phoenix,’” Gregory told Vanity Fair over the phone. “And this is her phoenix moment.”

The half-hour format certainly changes the tide of the show, which has drawn ire for its basic premise: two white guys, resenting and fighting with a black woman over her job. When you’re a woman of color, though, situations like this are unfortunately familiar. Gregory knows this all too well: “I’ve been so fascinated by that response,” she says. “I feel like particularly as a woman of color, being the only in a space is not novel, right? Competing against white men for something is not novel. I’ve never looked at as racist. I’ve just looked at it as, ‘O.K., that’s how it is.’“

Gregory knows what she’s talking about—while she specialized in theater in high school, she also has a bachelor’s in psychology and a master’s in social work. “I always had this interest in identity development. I did my thesis on racial identity development. At a predominately white institution, I was really digging deep into race and gender and general identity,” she says. “I wanted to go into the tough neighborhoods and talk to people who may not see the benefit of mental health. I was like, ‘I’m going to like, save the world.’” While living in Chicago for her master’s, though, she was drawn back into the theater community—and the rest is history.

Her unique background comes in handy when Gregory is trying to build a character—and to understand other characters’ motivations. Vice Principals, she says, is all about one thing: male entitlement. “If we want to get specific, it’s white-male entitlement,” she explains. “What that looks like is every TV show, every movie, everything we ever watch.” As Gregory notes, putting a “black female body” in a space where people aren’t necessarily used to seeing a woman of color can prompt a “knee-jerk response.”

“I don’t think we would respond in the exact same way if Melissa McCarthy was the principal, and they did the exact same thing ,” Gregory explains. “As a nation, as viewers, as industry, we have to be ready to accept black women specifically competing and maybe getting what appears to be attacked by white men. That, to me, is casting equality.”

Even so, Vice Principals elicits plenty of discomfort. This is pretty well exemplified in a scene from the beginning of its third episode, in which the vice principals make vile remarks about Dr. Brown’s body, including references to her hair, weight, clothing, and her supposed “smell.”


Show creators Danny McBride and Jody Hill.
Courtesy of HBO.
Scenes like this don’t trouble Gregory because, she says, Vice Principals co-creators McBride and Jody Hill “knew what they were doing,” she says. “They know what they’ve decided to do, and it’s not based on ‘we want to bring up a racial issue.’” Instead, she says, the show is about finding a person who can take down the two idiots played by McBride and Goggins: “Who’s strong enough to fight? They felt like this person in this body could do that.” It helps, she notes, that she knows what’s going to happen as Season 1 moves forward, as every episode of Vice Principals has already been filmed—including its second season.


Gregory likens rejecting what the show is trying to accomplish to retreating to our collective comfort zone. Do you think her character shouldn’t be placed in the situations Vice Principals places her in? If so, says Gregory, that’s “to make you feel better—not to make someone else feel better.”

It’s easier to leave race out of the equation, to “keep putting white people in those spaces, so we all feel good about the behavior.” But Gregory is prepared for something a bit messier: she wants meaty roles, rich in this kind of twisted irony. “I want to be able to do that. I want to do that in a Marvel movie. I want us to be battling. I want us to be taking up that space.” In fact, she says, she’s been personally fielding responses from women who feel the same way. “I’m getting a response from other women in general like, ‘Oh, I’m glad to see that they chose to put a woman who appears to be strong against these guys, who don’t appear to have it all together.’”

A woman who isn’t Melissa McCarthy—though Gregory does look to the Ghostbusters star as inspiration (along with British actress Olivia Colman and Suicide Squad star Viola Davis). “In so many ways, is a visual game changer for everyone. For me. In Bridesmaids, she made the movie for me. She stood out because she was so unapologetic, she was sexy, she was clear. I was like, ‘That’s the kind of female comedy that I’d laser focus on.’

“Literally there are days on set where I’ll be like, ‘Oh my goodness, can I do this?’” Gregory says. Moving from dramatic theater to comedy made for a difficult transition: “I would be in the trailer going, ‘O.K., wait. O.K.’” And then, one memorable day, “I just slapped myself in the head. I said, ‘I’m ashamed of you.’ I was like, ‘What would Melissa McCarthy do?’”