When actress Angela Means moved to Los Angeles with hopes to further her acting career, she had her goals all planned out. She planned to book global commercials and national spots, but at the top of her list was playing an “interesting” character. And when she got a call to play the role of Felicia on Friday, she thought, “This is it.”
But in an interview with Hype+, the actress said the mistreatment and misunderstanding of the character have been overwhelming.
“Why was there so much hate for such an obviously beautiful woman,” she said in the Hype+ interview. “Why would no one defend her?”
Later, Means described preparing for the role, revealing that she put an incredible amount of thought and work into the character’s backstory.
“I wish I still had Felicia’s bio,” she said, explaining that she “wrote a very intense bio on her” to understand what influenced the character.
In her preparation, she said that Felicia “emerged,” while Means started to slip away.
“I was feeling a lot of fear,” she said, referring to living with Felicia’s past.
Means shared that she was always perplexed by the mistreatment of Felicia in the film, and it’s something that’s haunted her in the almost 30 years since the film released.
“Maybe people were tired of her,” she said, holding back tears. “Why would people be so unkind and so dismissive?”
She also shared that the treatment Felicia faced in the film has translated to Means’ real life.
“To this day, I’ll see people say, ‘Bye, you dirty b***h, you f**ked up b***h, dumb b***h,'” she shared.
While Means commended the film’s creators for representing Black experiences in the ’90s, she noted that Felicia “fell through the cracks.”
“What happened to Felicia,” she said, later crying while describing how the character was abused and stood by a “bully.”
Watch the full interview below:
