Philly’s own Erika Alexander will have a street named in her honor

Actor Erika Alexander was 14 when she learned that she had landed her first movie role. She had to pretend she was happy, but her true reaction was one of dread.

“It’s probably the worst acting I ever did,” Alexander, 54, recalled in a recent interview with The Inquirer, “faking like I was happy that I got the role, because I was conflicted.”

Only a few weeks into a summer acting class at Philadelphia’s New Freedom Theatre, Alexander was a surprise pick for the role, beating out a community favorite. But Alexander wasn’t even all that interested in pursuing acting: She planned to become a scientist with the goal of curing cancer.

The role was a lead in 1987′s My Little Girl, kickstarting a 40-year acting career for Alexander. She hasn’t cured cancer, but she has inspired numerous Black women in politics, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, and former Georgia Representative Stacey Abrams.

She’s most recognized for classic 1990s sitcoms, playing the confident and quick-witted lawyer Maxine Shaw in Living Single. In The Cosby Show, she played cousin Pam, a city girl who moves in with her better-off family, not unlike Will Smith in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

The Philadelphia High School for Girls alum is back in her hometown this weekend. On Saturday, the city is celebrating Alexander’s local roots by renaming the street outside of New Freedom Theatre (Master Street between Broad and Carlisle Streets) “Erika Alexander Way.” In a mid-career retrospective in both Philadelphia and Brooklyn this month, Alexander is hosting several screenings of her films and talk-back events, including tonight’s showing of the Oscar-winning comedy American Fiction at the Philadelphia Film Center.

Though she left the city shortly after graduating high school, Alexander credits Philadelphia for being not just the place where she was discovered but for being the cultural center where she learned to embrace and love her Blackness. It was a lesson that she never forgot.

Alexander was born in Winslow, Ariz. to a preacher dad and teacher mom who were both orphans. She spent much of her early years moving around the state and living in a motel near Flagstaff, as her parents traveled to “sing for their supper, literally,” in church services, Alexander said.

The family moved to the East Coast when she was around 11, first arriving in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and then in Mount Airy.

“The children had lots of land to run with the tumbleweeds and climb pine trees [in Arizona],” said the actor’s mother, Sammie Alexander, 82. “To move from that to row houses, that was really a shock.”

The matriarch raised six kids as she balanced finishing her degree at Antioch University’s former Philadelphia campus. A trained opera singer who played piano, Sammie Alexander nurtured curiosity and creativity in her kids while looking to keep them busy and off the streets. While Erika didn’t particularly think of acting as a potential career, her mother recognized her passion for performance.

“Erika would watch the Al Alberts [variety] show on TV and she would say to me, ‘Mom, I could do that, I know I could, and I could do it better than them!’” said Alexander.

She signed up her daughter for classes at the historic Walnut Street Theatre initially, but that experience “wasn’t a very positive one,” so she turned to New Freedom Theatre. Also known as Freedom Theatre, it’s Pennsylvania’s oldest African American theater, founded by actor-director John E. Allen Jr. in 1966.

“They were creating Marines down in that basement theater performing arts school, and I think that I’ll always be grateful for that armor,” said Erika Alexander. “John E. Allen Jr. used to say we didn’t have the right not to be great … because he was wanting to connect us to our ancestors to say, ‘You have no idea what it took to get you here. So your trying won’t be good enough — you must excel.’”

Though the acting program only lasted six weeks, Alexander says those methodologies and techniques informed her career. Her teacher Johnnie Hobbs Jr. recalled her stage presence when she was just a teen.

“It’s an old proverb, I believe, ‘still waters run deep.’ There’s a stillness about Erika, a probative quality about her eyes,” he said. “There’s something about Erika that is very mesmerizing. She’s very real. She’s in her skin, she takes space.”

Alexander’s earliest roles were often disadvantaged Black women and girls, which weighed heavily on her. At Girls’ High, she played a rape victim in the school play. “She was normally a happy-go-lucky kid, but the darkness of that role really took a toll on her,” Alexander’s mother said.

Carla Watts, Alexander’s longtime best friend who also took classes at Freedom, has fond memories of the moment when the casting team for My Little Girl came to town. The film centered on a shelter for troubled kids and many Freedom kids played extras, including Watts. She also remembered the shock that reverberated through the theater when Alexander, the newcomer, was chosen over her friend Janeece Roderick for the lead.

“Erika probably felt as if they were rooting for [Janeece], because Janeece was the one that they knew,” said Watts.

The casting drama loomed large over the teens, but they soon became inseparable friends, bonding on set as they coped with the film’s intense subject matter. They stayed close afterward, trick or treating in Mount Airy, roller skating, and hanging out at the Gallery mall downtown.

Casting director Pat Golden, a Pittsburgh native, called up Alexander’s mother shortly after filming wrapped on My Little Girl. Erika had a real chance at an acting career, she said, and suggested getting an agent. They found one in New York.

Though she struggled to keep up with the rigorous classes at Girls’ High, in hindsight Erika Alexander realized that her teachers’ high expectations later informed her beloved role as Maxine Shaw in Living Single (created by showrunner Yvette Lee Bowser, who spent her early years in Philly’s Carroll Park neighborhood).

Ambitious, unapologetic, and successful, Maxine Shaw became a model for women of color in what Alexander calls “the Maxine Shaw effect.” Today, she wants to see more characters of color with that kind of impact on screen. In 2017, she cofounded Color Farm Media, an entertainment company dedicated to funding emerging writers and actors of color. In 2022, the organization surveyed Black women professionals about this effect and found that 90% said the character “inspired them to be confident and unafraid to speak their minds.”

Today, fans still call her “Max.” On a recent afternoon outside of Freedom Theatre, Philadelphians stopped Alexander to take selfies and gush over the show. She takes pride in returning home, where some of her siblings still live. “So much of what I believe and what I am comes from the soul of that city,” she said.

The street renaming ceremony will be held on Saturday, Sept. 21 at 3 p.m. at New Freedom Theatre, 1346 N. Broad St., Phila. Erika Alexander will also appear at a screening of “American Fiction” at 7 p.m. at the Philadelphia Film Center, 1412 Chestnut St., Phila.

An earlier version of the article misstated the name of Erika Alexander and Carla Watts’ colleague at Freedom Theatre. Her name is Janeece Roderick.