How to watch Genius: Aretha: It runs Sunday, March 21 through Wednesday, March 24 on National Geographic. Two episodes will air nightly, becoming available on Hulu the following day. Aretha Franklin will be given her well-earned R-E-S-P-E-C-T with the premiere of Genius: Aretha this Sunday night. The third series in the National Geographic Channel’s examination of what comprises genius, this season will explore the Queen of Soul’s (Cynthia Erivo) incomparable career and how she had an immeasurable impact and lasting influence on music. And in the examination of who Aretha was, the limited series also takes a long look at her father C.L. Franklin, played by Courtney B. Vance, who drove his daughter’s ambitions from a very young age. So, who was C.L. Franklin? He was a man of import in his own right as a civil rights activist and the pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, from 1946 until he was shot in 1979. He was a man who loved Sunday morning, but also Saturday night, and he made no bones about the contrast. “He didn’t have any education,” Vance tells Parade.com. “And so, there were issues that he had that he never dealt with. There wasn’t a psychiatrist or psychologist for him to go sit on the couch with. [So, becoming a somebody], you just go on with your life and, hopefully, that mess that’s in your past doesn’t catch up with you." But, Vance says, “it caught up with him. For better or worse, it caught up with him.” And that “mess” manifested itself in several ways. His wife Barbara left him because of his cheating. She died shortly after that, which caused Aretha to go mute for a year. C.L.’s plan to get Aretha back on track was to take her out on the gospel circuit with lax supervision. Aretha then got pregnant at age 12 and again at 14. That said, he was also a man who knew how to spread the word. “He was one of the first preachers to sell his sermons as albums, so people could go and buy his sermons,” Vance says. “They’re all digitized now, and there must be 100s of these sermons that you can go and listen to. I listened to them, took notes on them, and listened to recurring sounds. It was a joy to be able to sit in my trailer or my hotel room and just let the C.L.-ness of it all just wash over me.” But the most important part of this story obviously isn’t C.L. It’s Aretha. And in a time where more Black stories need to be told and elevated, Vance believes Franklin’s was “the story” to tell. “If there ever was a story to tell, it’s her story. Everybody loves her, but don’t nobody know her. I didn’t even know about her and I’m from Detroit,” he says. He specifically didn’t know anything about her family. “I didn’t know her daddy came from abject nothing to become probably the greatest and most well-known Black pastor in the country at that time. So much so that he could galvanize 100,000 people to do the March in Detroit where MLK [Martin Luther King] spoke, where his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech was previewed. So, he was huge,” he said. “They were the first family of Detroit.” He continued, “So, it is the story. And there are so many stories like that that we need to tell. I’m hoping this will continue the march on to tell all these stories of color.”
Do you have a memory of the first time you heard Aretha’s music, or maybe you met her?
I met her at the Kennedy Center Honors because my wife, Angela Bassett, and I, were on the nominating committee, so we used to go every year. I think that year we were actually performing for one of the other honorees. The award ceremony is actually Saturday night and Sunday morning is a big, gorgeous, sumptuous brunch. Aretha was in there with her family. And so, we were able to actually sit at the table with her. It goes on and on. It’s all you can eat, and it’s just really just sitting there talking and laughing. It was very heady, free time. There was no COVID. It was sitting there with Aretha, going, “I’m sitting here with Aretha.”
You mentioned the greatness of C.L. Franklin, what an important pastor he was, but what about this dichotomy in his personality? How do you capture both sides of his character?
I approach it just like I do when I look in the mirror. There are two sides to me. There’s maybe four or five sides. The one that the world sees is maybe one side. We all have those sides. We all have the uncle or the aunt or the cousin that’s cray cray, and we all, “OK. Here they are.” We all know it. And so, it’s not a very strange occurrence that he had some issues. We all do. His issues impacted. He was a very famous personage, but he still came up the same way everybody came up. His stepfather was a sharecropper. And he witnessed the burnings, the draggings and the lynchings as a young boy that everybody of that generation witnessed and were all harmed by. And so, when they came up north in the great migration, they had to figure out what would they do with all that stuff they had in their minds, where they thought they were never going to be nobody, but all of a sudden he’s somebody and it was, “Oh, I’m somebody now. Yeah, I’m somebody. OK.” And so, his family had to deal with it. They had to figure out what they were going to do with the trauma and the angst, and it fueled them to go further and harder and never give up. And so, it was messy.
That explains why C.L. didn’t care if Aretha finished school and how he let her have so much freedom.
Completely shocking, but, again, it’s the circumstance. I think none of that would’ve happened if her mama was there. And because her mother and father fell out and because she was a mama’s girl, she went mute after her mama died. Because she was her father’s muse, he had to do something to get her, is my feeling. He had to do something to get her out of herself. And he said, “Come on, let’s go. We’re going to go to the gospel circuit.” And she was back. Because he woke her up in the middle of the night and brought her downstairs to see all the superstars within his house until all hours of the night. So, she wanted that and he knew she wanted that. So, they were both doing the same thing with each other. Should he have done that? Should he have taken her into that world right away? No, but he knew that if he didn’t, he might lose her permanently because she was mute for a year. So, it’s very complex and complicated.
Talk about working with Cynthia. She does such a fabulous job in this.
She an absolute sweetheart. Nobody had a lot of rehearsal time because it’s television. So executive producers Anthony Hemingway and Suzan-Lori Parks made sure that we had an opportunity to sit with each other and talk about what the scene was about, who our characters were, where we’re coming from, where we’re going, all those kinds of things. And then, ultimately, we had to jump in. Television don’t have a whole lot of time, but she’s a consummate professional. So, she’s malleable and would ask, “Courtney, what do you think?” I’m like, “What do you think?” And so, with that spirit, you can do anything. As we grew into and found out more about our characters, we were all set up because we respected each other and loved each other. And so, we just fell right into our rhythms. And that’s a testament to Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Clive Davis as producers, and Suzan-Lori Parks and Anthony Hemingway to set all that up for us.
Talk a little bit about the hair and the costumes. They were captivating.
It was a process. [My wig] was called a conk. Fried, dyed and laid to the side. That’s what they call it. I absolutely love wigs, but you have to have good people who know how to put them on so the glue doesn’t leave you hurting afterward. There was Ms. Louisa and her lovely ladies, she would just use her wigs. She’s the genius. The wig just gave me a sense, especially at that period where C.L. Franklin was all about his process and his hair, and so, when the wig went on, it was on. It was so gorgeous. I have a couple of pictures that are so delicious. Then they went through that period where Aretha started wearing her hair natural like James Brown. There was the whole processed hair phase that Black folks were rebelling against and trying to reclaim themselves. But, for the most part, C.L. was fried, dyed and laid to the side. Next, see how Beyoncé broke records at the 2021 Grammys.
