Regina Hall Interview: ‘Black Monday’
“There’s something great about going to work and not knowing what you are going to get,” exclaims Regina Hall about being on the Showtime comedy “Black Monday.” Watch our full exclusive video interview with her above. She continues, “There are so many ad-libs. We laugh a lot. It doesn’t stop because once we get into the zone we’re all doing it. I’m glad everyone’s so great because they are long days. There’s so many discoveries we get to make at work and it’s a lot of fun creatively.”
The second season of series explores the world of Wall Street in the wake of the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987. Hall plays Dawn Darcy, a stock trader who takes over the Jammer group with Blair (Andrew Rannells) after they framed Mo (Don Cheadle) for causing the market crash. Dawn is now in charge of a predominantly female workplace, although she is struggling to get credit in the media over her male counterpart Blair.
Hall explains, “It’s been great to play a character that’s plowing through. She knows she’s not going to get the credit for a myriad of reasons, but mostly because she’s female. A lot of the things we talk about in the show, we are still battling today. Even Wall Street is still a predominantly male environment. Things have changed but in 30 years it hasn’t changed as much as one would think; certainly not as much as Dawn thought it would when she was running the Jammer group. In the show there are ways you see how technology has grown exponentially, and other ways where the human vision hasn’t expanded to where we wanted it to be. A world where it’s genderless or colorless.”
While dealing with relevant issues “Black Monday” is unashamedly a comedy. Hall believes, “It’s one of the most fun shows to work on. We laugh every day. There’s a Halloween episode coming up. I can’t say what it is but there’s a dance off. I laughed really hard seeing everyone in their costumes. It’s so much fun. We know it’s serious but we get to make fun of it all. Even the movies in the 80s. I enjoyed those movies but we poke fun at what they state and how far we’ve come. Even the terms we used then we would never say now. We’ve had this slow growth of awareness. There’s a balance of making the moments that are serious land but also being really funny. Trying to capture it but still remember that we are a comedy first.”
