NOW ENTERTAINMENT Dec. 15 Month 00- -21, 00,2024 2023
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Kerry Washington (“Scandal”) stars in “The Six Triple Eight,” Tyler Perry’s (“Zatima”) emotional new war epic premiering Friday, Dec. 20, on Netflix.
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Kerry Washington stars in “The Six Triple Eight”
Cover Story Women at war: Tyler Perry war epic boosts morale on Netflix By Dana Simpson For some in our day and age, low morale could stem from something like a personal loss, a change in one’s financial or medical situation, or a global pandemic. For others, like those in Netflix’s newest drama, low morale is a pandemic in and of itself. In the war epic “The Six Triple Eight,” premiering Friday, Dec. 20, on Netflix, multihyphenate filmmaker Tyler Perry (“Zatima”) joins forces with actress and entrepreneur Kerry Washington (“Scandal”) to tell the remarkable story of a group of women who dedicated themselves to boosting soldier morale during World War II. Tasked with a daunting and perilous duty, members of the Black women’s U.S. Army battalion, known collectively as the 6888th, risked their lives to deliver a backlog of undelivered mail to American soldiers on the front lines. Billed by Netflix as “the inspiring story of World War II’s only Women’s Army Corps Unit of color,” “The Six Triple Eight” is a
period drama which focuses on “the quiet heroism of everyday individuals.” Nearing the end of the war, soldier morale was at an all-time low as battles dragged on all over Europe and several supporting efforts continued on the home front. Due to the massive loss of life and increasingly dangerous conditions abroad, much of the United States’ outgoing mail — which largely consisted of messages of hope and important news from loved ones — failed to reach its intended recipients overseas. Aware of the ever-growing backlog, philanthropist, educator and human rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune (portrayed by Oprah Winfrey, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” 2017) approached then-first lady Eleanor Roosevelt (played by Academy Award-winning actress Susan Sarandon, “Dead Man Walking,” 1996) to discuss the creation of a military unit to address the nearly 17 million pieces of mail for delivery, some of which dated back as far as three years. Thus, the 6888th Central
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Postal Directory Battalion, or Six Triple Eight, was born, and Maj. Charity Adams (Washington) was assigned as its strong and capable leader. The idea for “The Six Triple Eight” came to writer/director Perry as something he felt called to after having been approached by producer Nicole Avant (“Wag the Dog,” 1997), who wished to film a movie based on a Kevin Hymel article in WWII History Magazine. The article, titled “WAC Corporal Lena Derriecott and the 6888th Central Postal Battalion,” was an interview with battalion member Lena Derriecott King, whom Perry met later, in preparation for the film. Ninety-nine years old at the time, Derriecott King told Perry “that her decision to enlist was spurred by the death of her friend, a Jewish man named Abram David, on his first combat mission for the U.S. Army Air Forces” (per Backstage). “She got really emotional, saying to me that he had died within a few weeks of being in the war,” Perry said to the Back-
stage interviewer. “And to see her emotion after 70-plus years, I thought, ‘Wow!’” Derriecott King died peacefully this past January, at the age of 100, but her memory lives on through the power of film. Portrayed onscreen by “Sistas” and “If Beale Street Could Talk” (2018) actress Ebony Obsidian, the late corporal is honored alongside 854 of her fellow servicewomen of color for delivering millions of pieces of mail in less than three months, which was half the allotted time for the unit’s mission. And if you are among those who have yet to learn of the 6888th Battalion, you are not alone — Perry, too, was taken aback by the incredible story when Avant first brought it his way. “I was quite embarrassed to not know that bit of history,” Perry shared via Backstage. “The very thought of that immediately piqued my interest, but it also [made me] pretty frustrated that these women’s stories had been ignored for all of these years.”
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