Netflix has released the first exclusive photos of its limited series on the first female self-made African-American millionaire, Madam C.J. Walker.
Set to be premiered March 20, Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker features Academy award-winning actress Octavia Spencer playing the lead role.
The four-part limited series also stars Kevin Carroll, who plays Walker’s lawyer Freeman Ransom, Tiffany Haddish, who plays Walker’s daughter Lelia, Carmen Ejogo, who plays Addie Munroe, Bill Bellamy, who plays Ransom’s cousin Sweetness and Garrett Morris, who plays Walker’s father-in-law.
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The series is based on the book, On Her Own Ground, which is authored by Walker’s great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles.
The rights to the book were optioned to formulate into a show by Zero Gravity in 2016. The deal stated that Spencer would act and produce and Kasi Lemmons would serve as the director. In 2017, Lebron James and SpringHill Entertainment hopped on board to solidify the deal.
Walker, originally named Sarah Breedlove, was born to enslaved parents. At the age of seven, she became orphaned; she married at 14 and in 1906 began her million-dollar hair enterprise.
After her husband’s death, Walker moved to St. Louis with her daughter, where she began to work as a laundress. At the time, black women had a lot of issues with their hair, including dandruff and other scalp diseases. After experimenting with products in her home and other items in the market, Breedlove developed a shampoo and ointment with sulfur that helped stimulate the scalp and made it healthier for hair growth.
With her new husband, Charles Joseph Walker, Breedlove developed and marketed a line of beauty and hair products for black women through Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, the successful business she founded. Madam Walker’s hair products were distributed and sold door to door throughout the United States.
In 1908, the couple settled in Pittsburgh and opened Lelia College, an institute ran by her daughter A’Lelia Walker, where they trained individuals in hair care and entrepreneurship.
Take a look at the exclusive photos of the series below:
