CELEBRITY ACTOR PRODUCER
storyteller; and Vaughn’s jazz singer Billie Holiday, whose life was portrayed by Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues, which garnered five Academy Award nominations. “They were both risk-takers with no limits,” says Vaughn, who says that hearing “no” simply makes her work harder. The original plan was for Sigers-Beedles, who was temporarily living in Atlanta, to move to Los Angeles, but that plan shifted once Vaughn met Karon Riley, an NFL football player, who had made the city his base after a stint with the Atlanta Falcons. “Everybody warned me that I would ruin my career by moving to Atlanta,” says the actress, whose series credits include Will Smith’s executive produced All of Us , Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns , Oprah Winfrey’s Greenleaf , BounceTV’s Mann &Wife and Fox’s Rel . Not long after they started their company, Vaughn saw a documentary called Searching for Debra Winger about how hard it can be for actresses to sustain a career. The message resonated with her, but she noted that the cast was all white, except for Whoopi Goldberg. “There were a lot of differences for black actresses,” she says. “I thought it was important and that we should do a documentary.” The co-producers booked tickets to LA with a plan to shoot the documentary over a weekend. Vaughn tapped her friend Thomas J. Burns to direct. Sigers- Beedles pulled together a crew and Vaughn assembled 25 of her peers, including Sheryl Lee Ralph, Regina King, Malinda Williams, and Jasmine Guy to talk about the journey of working in Black Hollywood. “We talked about balancing being mothers and wives with our careers,” says Vaughn. “It was emotional. We were laughing and crying.” One famous actress declined to take part. After the well-received LA screening of Angels Can’t Help But Laugh in 2007, she sought out Vaughn to tell her she regretted her decision. “She said she was afraid of what it was going to be and was surprised by its uplifting message,” says the winner of three NAACP Image Awards. Vaughn has not only has starred in several independent features but has since produced multiple independent projects with producing partner Sigers-Beedles. “It’s been a dozen years since that documentary. Probably time to revisit the subject.” Adds Sigers-Beedles, “The irony is that some of the messages would still be the same.” Also ironic is that neither Vaughn nor Sigers- Beedles ever imagined this career path. Vaughn hails from Hunters Point in Bayview, one of the roughest areas in San Francisco. “Where I grew up, I mainly saw drug dealers and gang bangers and that’s who girls were hanging out with,” she says. “The difference in my
single-parent household was my mother valued education. My mom, my grandmother, and my aunt all emphasized that we had to do our part.” The actress loved watching TV, especially sitcoms, adding, “I hardly ever remember going to the movies.” While studying business
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call from a good friend asking her to be the stylist on his independent film, she was initially going to turn it down. It was low pay, and she had grown tired of costuming. “But then there was a small voice that told me that I needed to help my friend,” says Sigers-Beedles. “I almost didn’t take that job. You never know where you are going to find your blessing.” She happened to have a box of her newly-printed novel in her car. She made the split-second decision to hand them out to the entire cast, which led to that life-changing invitation from Vaughn. “Once I got to Hollywood, I recognized we were kindred spirits with a passion for storytelling,” says the novelist, songwriter, producer, director and entertainment executive. “The more we hear NO, the more motivated we are.” One of the duo’s favorite projects was Girlfriends’ Getaway 1 . It starred Vaughn with Malinda Williams, Garcelle Beauvais, and Essence Atkins, and premiered as the highest rated original movie in TVOne history. “When we approached several networks about the project, they immediately started to try and change it,” recalls Vaughn. “They wanted the 40-something characters to be in their 20s. That was not the movie we wanted to make.” Sigers-Beedles laughs when she recalls how many times they changed the script once they got the greenlight for Girlfriends’ Getaway 1 . The biggest rewrite came when Vaughn broke the news over lunch that she was expecting her third child. “We were already scheduled to shoot in Trinidad, and that meant that Terri was going to be eight months pregnant by then,” says the writer. The production partners pushed forward and delivered another hit, which was followed up by Girlfriends’ Getaway 2 , filmed in Puerto Rico. Sigers-Beedles, who is also married with two children, says that they have grown creatively every step of the way: “I’ve become a better writer, a better producer and director. People are often surprised that we are still together. Our missions are so aligned. We are able to inspire women and young people.” Vaughn hasn’t forgotten the goal that drew her to Sigers-Beedles in the first place: “We still need to sell a TV series that we’ve created and I star in.”
at Cal State University in Hayward, Vaughn got approached by a stage play producer judging the Miss Black California pageant Vaughn had entered. “He asked me to audition,” she says. “I had no clue what auditioning meant.” She showed up at the Black Repertory Group Theater in Berkeley with a Polaroid photo her friend snapped the night before and a resume that listed her jobs at the Marriott Hotel and Avis. “Everybody else had 8 x 10 glossies and the theater was filled with people moaning, stretching and doing these weird exercises to warmup for their auditions,” she says. “I showed up all wrong.” After her initial reading, director Paul Roach gave her notes, letting her know the character was sassy and streetwise. She won the role, and the fifth-year college student dropped out prior to her final quarter before graduation. “Paul changed my life,” she says. The director traveled with the cast for two years touring the country with the play and gave Vaughn a crash course in the craft of acting: “He introduced me to the greats of theater — Michael Chekhov, Uta Hagen and Konstantin Stanislavski. I studied like crazy.” The young actress, mindful of her roots, founded the Take Wings Foundation to mentor young women growing up in at-risk communities in San Francisco. Once the tour ended, she moved to Hollywood. Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Cas Sigers dreamed of being a writer, but her mathematics professor parents steered her in a different direction. “My father told me I needed to get a degree that was practical,” says the creative dynamo, whose office directly faces Vaughn’s. Sigers graduated with a degree in textiles from North Carolina State University in Winston-Salem and promptly landed a job as a designer for a major children’s clothing company out of New York. In the early 1990s, she started styling for music videos. That led to costuming for films and writing treatments for music videos, rekindling the dream she’d shelved. When a cousin invited her to move to Atlanta and share rent, Sigers was eager for a change. She wanted to concentrate on being a novelist. When she got the
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