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Courtesy of StarzKatori Hall is taking viewers on a trip down deep in the Mississippi Delta with her new sultry Starz series, P-Valley.
Hall, who serves as writer, creator and showrunner, tells ABC Audio that the strip club-inspired drama offers more than the stereotypical narrative on pole dancers.
“It was really about using reality and using a lot of those real women that I met,” Hall says. “And so the four [characters] — Mercedes, Miss Mississippi, Gidget, Autumn Night — [are] a diversity of perspectives because every woman does it for completely different reasons.”
“Some women do it because they love it,” she continues. “Some women do it because they’re trying to be out of a relationship. Some women do it because they need to stack their paper and need to go to school, or they need to take care of other things.”
For those four women — played by Brandee Evans, Shannon Thornton, Skyler Joy and Elarica Johnson — that meant digging deep and working hard to show their character’s “vulnerability.”
“They have their own boot camps where they trained… so they could do their own tricks on the pole,” Hall explains. “Obviously, we had stunt doubles who did the more complex tricks, but these women really trained hard because authenticity was what we were going for.”
Thankfully for Hall, her talented cast made her job extremely easy.
“I am so blessed to have the cast that I have,” she says. “They are beyond perfection.”
And if perfection isn’t enough for viewers, Hall promises that the series will have plenty of intrigue to match.
“There’s so many stories to tell. I mean, as many people that are in that club, [there are] that many stories to tell,” she teases.
P-Valley premieres July 12th at 9 p.m. ET on Starz.
By Candice Williams
Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
'P-Valley' Authenticity Behind club-inspired creator drama explains Katori Strip
