Netflix hosted a special screening of Ruth & Boaz Tuesday night at Regal Atlantic Station in Atlanta, followed by a post-screening Q&A moderated by Kandi Burruss.
Stars Serayah and Tyler Lepley were joined by producer DeVon Franklin and supporting cast members Jermaine Dupri, Lecrae, Nijah Brenea, Walnette Santiago, James Thomas Lee and Gabby Jackson.
Other attendees include Joey Bada$$, Da Brat, Montell Jordan, Eva Marcille, along with Terri J. Vaughn of Tyler Perry’s Miss Governor, Tyler Perry’s Beauty In Black star Taylor Polidore Williams.
The Black love aspect of the film
During the Q&A, Serayah spoke on what initially drew her to the script and spoke to the film’s Black love aspect.
“Give it up for Black love. DeVon Franklin, Tyler Perry, Netflix. Yes,” she said. “And the story was such a good read, and I felt like the characters were very honest and grounded, but also so wholesome. And I was really excited to play a wholesome character.”
Lepley echoed her sentiment, speaking to how the story challenges modern views on love. “Just the idea of what Black love really is,” he said. “When you look around, it’s almost like love is starting to feel exhausting. It feels very surface-level. It feels very transactional and almost like it’s conditional. People only step into it if they’re taking something away from it.”
He continued, “What we did on the set in terms of putting our own spin on the classic tale that came from the Book of Ruth … it is a blessing for us to be able to speak for us in terms of our culture and what Black love is. This is just a refreshing story to let you know that if you step into a relationship and you actually serve the relationship and you serve God and your purpose, you’d be surprised what you come out of it with.”
Franklin, who produced the film alongside Tyler Perry, revealed how the project evolved from both professional intention and personal transformation. “There was another idea that we were thinking we were going to do, and we went into negotiating that particular project, and it fell through,” he said. “And literally, I’m sitting at home thinking like, ‘Well, what am I going to do?’ And around this time, I’d been doing a sermon series on what it means to be single. And I started studying the Book of Ruth, and it was like, wow, this is so interesting. Ruth never went looking for love. She had made a commitment to be of service. And then love was given as a reward.”
Franklin on the Netflix partnership he and Perry have with Netflix
He added that his own life began to mirror the scenes in the film as he was falling in love off-screen, calling the experience “the beautiful thing of art imitating life, [and] life imitating art.”
As Franklin reflected on the bigger picture behind the project, he shared why this film felt like the right one to launch their Netflix collaboration. “This is the first of many movies that are coming. And so it was very important to go back to the Word and to do something very unique,” he said. “This is a historic opportunity to modernize a Bible story, one of the greatest love stories in the Bible story, and to do it with us. It had never been done.”
Ruth & Boaz is on Netflix on Friday.
