“The Ms. Pat Show” returns on a high from an inaugural season that was not just critically acclaimed, the series also just received its first Emmy nomination for “Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series!” The “grown-folks sitcom,” complete with unfiltered language, is based on Pat’s incredible real-life story of a teen mom and former convicted felon from inner city Atlanta turned suburban Indiana mom.
Season 2 of The Ms. Pat Show (which has already taken on profound topics including non-binary pronouns, school shootings, drug addiction, racism, and child abuse) finds the Carson Family moving from a period of adjusting to a white suburban neighborhood, into a season of growth in these new surroundings. This modern, multi-generational African American family, navigating life’s twists and turns against the backdrop of current cultural chaos, explores self-love and past traumas. Most importantly, Pat confronts her own demons with plenty of laughs and even a few tears along the way, as only she can do.
Check out the Season 2 trailer below:
We love this show! It’s definitely raw and hilarious but this season definitely delves a little deeper into how Ms. Pat’s past has colored her present. BOSSIP’s Sr. Content Director Janeé Bolden chopped it up with Ms. Pat herself, Patricia Williams as well as “The Ms. Pat Show” co-creator and executive producer Jordan E. Cooper about the new season and the journey they’ve taken to creating the hit series.
If you’ve seen “The Ms. Pat Show” you already know there is nothing like it, and that’s for good reason.
“We’re here to do something that’s never been done,” Ms. Pat told BOSSIP. “He [Jordan E. Cooper] wanted to throw everything out the window because he comes from theater. I’m a comedian, TV was not my realm, he’s the one who wanted to break all the rules, I was just willing to give him my stories. It was just really his idea. He was the one to decide we shouldn’t be on Fox. I was like what are you saying? He said, ‘She’s going to be so much better if you just let her be her.’ I said ‘Come here boy,’ Ain’t nobody gonna let a big Black woman cuss on TV.’”
At the time, Cooper was just a senior in college.
“I said, ‘Come here Jordan. You’re gonna make me look ghetto. I’m already a big Black woman.’” Ms. Pat recalled. “He said, ‘But you cuss anyway!’ I said, ‘No I don’t curse.’”
“She said, ‘No the fu\*\* I don’t curse,’” Cooper interjected.
“As a grown woman who has kids older than him, I had to just sit back and let him guide me,” Ms. Pat continued. ” I’ve been that kid with a dream before. So many times as a kid with a dream so many people can shut you down because they don’t understand. I think by me being a mother when he came along I was able to understand, that this is a kid with a dream. Just looking for a sandbox to play in. I was like, ‘Go on and play boy. What do you want to do?’ So many times I backed him up, when I was like ‘Should I be backing him up right now?’
“I thank her for that because she really trusted me to push her outside of the boundary,” Copper told BOSSIP. ” I remember her reading the first draft, the first ten pages and she came to me like, ‘You got me saying ‘Ni**?!’ Ni**a what the f\*\*\* you think I’m going to do?’ I was like, ‘Yeah we’re going to do it in front of a live audience.’ I’ve never seen an R-rated sitcom, I wanted to see an R-rated sitcom. That’s how people talk. That’s how we are. I feel like there’s such a dollhouse of what a sitcom is and what a TV mom is. Let’s blow it all up. Let’s do something different. People are on their phones all day, this is where they get most of their content, and this is uncensored. This has no censors, this has no boundaries, you gotta create television that has the same elements of what they hold in their hand all day.”
Jordan’s vision was unorthodox from day one, but ultimately Pat chose to ride with him no matter what because she felt he did something that previous collaborators failed to do.
“When he came up with the idea, [to take the show to streaming] I thought he was crazy,” Ms. Pat recalls. “I was like, ‘They’re never gonna do that.’ When we went in to Fox he said, ‘Are you going to back me up” and I was like ‘I think I am.’ He was like, ‘We should move her to streaming.’ And we get with Lee Daniels, and I said, ‘We should move to streaming.’ He was like, ‘Should we?’ It was risky. I’m a person from the streets so I’m not scared of gambling. I always say scared money don’t make none.”
“I had already been through two writers,” Ms. Pat continued. “That was my third deal. I said, ‘We might as well go all out.’ At least he’s more interested in me. He was listening. He did something for me the other writers didn’t do. He listened. Even though he had a big idea about what the show was all about I told him, ‘I got this idea about being on a plane talking to white men or white people about uncomfortable situations.’ I lived in Indiana, in an all white neighborhood and I used to fly Southwest. In my head I could see it, but I didn’t know TV so I didn’t know how to put it together and every writer I told that, they said, ‘That doesn’t make sense.’ I was like ‘Why doesn’t anybody listen to me?’ The first thing I said to him was ‘I see myself on a plane having an uncomfortable situation about race with white people.’ I do it for real in real life. I blocked my seat off, back when I was flying Southwest. You had to be a white man and you had to look like you would never have a conversation with a Black person and I would block my seat off and when I’d see your a\*\* coming down the aisle I would let you have a seat and he created that for me. The way he did it blew my mind, with the plane opening up. I said ‘Oh hell I didn’t ask for all that. You spending too much money boy!”
“A $30,000 plane!” Jordan chimed in.
The new season of “The Ms. Pat Show” deals with some very real childhood traumas. On the show audiences will witness Ms. Pat uncovering a lot of pain from her past. While mental wellness takes a front seat in the storyline on the show, Ms. Pat says the show has greatly contributed to her personal healing. Case in point, the third episode of the second season, entitled “Don’t Touch My Hair” explores how Ms. Pat moving away from her favorite protective style — wigs. The episode delves deep into the childhood scars that surround her natural hair insecurities.
“I haven’t been to therapy,” Ms. Pat told BOSSIP. “I think this show has done that for me because he’s broken down so many doors. Like that whole episode with my mom. Those are the things, whatever you pretty much see is what I was going through in my childhood. I wanted to do a Black Hair episode last year but we only had 10 episodes so when we got a chance to do it this year, it was such a healing moment for me, because I was told ‘Your hair is nappy.’ It’s just what Black moms do. My sister was so much prettier than me, but she ended up on crack, but my mama thought the world of my sister. ‘Oh she’s so much prettier.’ So my whole life I thought I was ugly. So when we re-enact that, to see her pulling the younger Rabbit’s hair and telling my sister she’s so much prettier, on set it fu\*\*ed me up.”
“When we were setting up the scene… I see her walking out from her trailer and she was just standing there staring,” Jordan E. Cooper recalled. “I could see the wheels turning in her head and I could see her going back to a space. That was one of the most vulnerable episodes for her where she really gave everything. To see that over again and to hear that over again. I’m that friend that’s like, ‘No look at the sh\*\*, so you can move through it.’ It exists somewhere in you and the moment you see it you can pluck it out and say, ‘Nah that’s not me.’ That’s why we wanted to open the season the way we did. If you open up the way we do it sets the scene for the season.’
We really tried to avoid spoilers as much as possible but if you read between the lines, y’all need to go ahead and start streaming Season 2 of “The Ms. Pat Show” on BET+ Now!
