“Bernie Mac is the guy you don’t wanna follow. Ever,” Chris Rock says at the beginning of a new episode of Unsung Hollywood featuring comedian Bernie Mac. The TV One series kicks off its second season Wednesday. A titan among his peers, the Chicago comedian—born Bernard Jeffrey McCullough Oct. 5, 1957—is best-known today for his hit…

There’s probably never been an episode more true to its title than Unsung for Xscape. Despite three platinum albums fueled by countless chart-toppers, the Atlanta girl group never garnered the mainstream success it should have, and this Unsung episode explores the many reasons why. While it’s quite doubtful that those 30 and under even know…

These days, comedian Hannibal Buress is probably most well-known to non-comedy fans for reminding everyone last year during a comedy routine that went viral about the allegations that Bill Cosby drugged women for sex. To date, more than 40 women have claimed that the onetime comedy icon sexually assaulted them, and this week, unsealed court documents…

In the last two years, former NFL hopeful Omari Hardwick’s Hollywood backup plan has been going especially well. He’s made a huge impact, from playing Mary Jane’s married lover on BET’s Being Mary Jane to starring as lead character Ghost on Starz’s Power. The Root caught up with Hardwick in his hometown of Atlanta to…

With his debut film, 1999’s The Wood—set in his native Inglewood, Calif., in metro Los Angeles, about three childhood best friends, one on the brink of getting married—screenwriter-director Rick Famuyiwa added a refreshing twist to the hood genre largely defined by such films as 1991’s Boyz n the Hood and 1993’s Menace II Society. Several…

When Orange Is the New Black—the unlikely hit series set in a women’s prison—kicked off in 2013, the Boston-born Uzo Aduba, whose parents are Nigerian, was an unknown. Theater, not television, had been her primary medium. But thanks to that training, Aduba has taken her popular character, Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren, who could easily have…

As Starz’s gritty New York City drama, Power, settles into its second season, fans are certainly anxious to see which moves James “Ghost” St. Patrick (Omari Hardwick), the drug kingpin-club owner, will make. He wants to go legit while juggling his wife, Tasha (Naturi Naughton), and his renewed high school love, Angela (Lela Loren), who…

Ever since the release of 1993’s What’s Love Got to Do With It, the film based on Tina Turner’s autobiography, I, Tina, Ike Turner has been more infamously known as a wife beater than as a musical innovator. So it’s not surprising that some have side-eyed TV One’s decision to kick off the latest season…

David Letterman’s retirement from his long-running Late Show With David Letterman—which began on Feb. 1, 1982, as Late Night With David Letterman on NBC and later moved to CBS on Aug. 30, 1993, after NBC chose Jay Leno to succeed the legendary Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show—has rightfully prompted a lot of celebration. Back…

Since she initially gained notoriety as Layla Williamson on One Life to Live, then as the business-minded Raina Thorpe on Gossip Girl and model Jenna Rice on The Game, Tika Sumpter’s career has steadily been on the rise. Thanks to the role of the messy Candace Young on Tyler Perry’s The Haves and the Have…