The first half of Tyler Perry’s Beauty in Black Season 1 squeezed a lot of strip club scandal, murder, blackmail, and kidnapping into its ten riveting episodes. But, if you can believe it, the second half of the Chicago–set series’ first season — streaming on Netflix — has even more juicy drama and salacious twists, especially when it comes to Kimmie.
Taylor Polidore Williams (Divorce in the Black, Snowfall), who plays the down-on-her-luck dancer, explains her character’s arc over the first season: “She’s desperate for a way out,” the actor tells Tudum. “She has dreams, she’s inspired to be more, but she’s both physically and mentally trapped. We watch her get pushed to her absolute breaking point through all of Part 1. By the end of the season, Kimmie is on the verge of discovering a whole new level of power.”
Beauty in Black is Perry’s first series for Netflix; his second, She the People, is set to debut later in 2025. “I was told many times over many years that Black entertainment doesn’t travel throughout the world,” the Hollywood heavyweight tells Tudum. “To have Netflix continue to disprove that over and over with everything I’ve put on the platform has been phenomenal.”
Read on to find out about the series’ many major reveals, and scroll to the bottom to find out what happens in Part 2 of Beauty in Black.
The series follows two women on very different life trajectories — and a collision course toward each other. Williams plays Kimmie, who struggles to make ends meet after her mother kicks her out. Crystle Stewart (For Better or Worse, Acrimony) is Mallory, who runs her own successful business. Eventually, they become entangled in each other’s lives.
Set in Chicago, the story brings together a wealthy Black family who own a hair-care dynasty and an exotic dancer caught up in the seedy underbelly of a famed strip club.
“The hair-care business here is huge, [and Atlanta club] Magic City is huge, and I was like, ‘What happened if those worlds collided — the stripper world and this hair-care business?’ ” says Perry. The takeaway from the series, he adds, is “Never ever underestimate the power of the underdog.”
Although Perry found inspiration from “dual strip clubs” around Atlanta in the ’90s and is familiar with families of real-life hair-care dynasties, he says the story itself is pure fiction and designed “to entertain.” With this series, he “wanted to have some fun.”
Part 1 reached No. 1 on the Global TV Top 10 List (English) following its debut. It’s the latest production from Perry’s creative partnership with Netflix: He’ll write, direct, and produce films and series under a multiyear first-look deal. His most recent film, The Six Triple Eight, stars Kerry Washington in an inspiring story that became his most-viewed film in the first four weeks after its release.
Perry’s previous films with Netflix include A Jazzman’s Blues, an epic about forbidden love that made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival; A Madea Homecoming, the 12th installment of the billion-dollar Madea franchise; Mea Culpa, starring Kelly Rowland; and the thriller A Fall from Grace. Will Areu, Angi Bones, and Tony Strickland produce Beauty in Black for Tyler Perry Studios.
The gorgeous cast brings together new talent, strong Black leads, and legends — many of whom you’ll recognize from previous projects in the Tyler Perry universe.
Perry says he loved “working with the legends,” including Lawson and Morgan, as well as fresh talent like Polidore Williams, with whom he’d worked previously on Divorce in the Black. “When she came to the audition, I go, ‘Oh, you’ve got gears. You’ve got gears. So we’re going to put all those gears to work.’ ”
Perry adds, “The demographic of my audience [is] all over the place. I wanted to make sure that we’re not only bringing in new faces but also bringing in faces that people know, that are familiar, and who can lend something incredible to the series.”
Part 1 of Beauty in Black follows Kimmie, a dancer hoping to figure out a career path. She’s inspired by beauty mogul Mallory, a member of the wealthy Bellarie family. But Kimmie quickly finds herself embroiled in the family’s drama — while one half runs the respectable Beauty in Black brand, the other half runs the club (and a major human trafficking operation).
At the end of Episode 8, club manager Body has kidnapped Kimmie’s sister. But Kimmie is no longer taking the passenger seat in her own life, and she mows a car right into Body, pinning her between two bumpers in a motel parking lot.
“I don’t think anybody’s going to be able to figure out where it’s going and how that rise of power happens with Kimmie,” Perry teased to Tudum before Part 2’s release. “It’s going to be mind-blowing for people.”
As we see in the final six episodes of the season, it’s the people Kimmie loves — including bestie/roommate Rain and younger sister Sylvie (Bailey Tippen) — that force her to fight back. “Kimmie doesn’t initially find the strength to fight for herself alone, because her love and purpose exist outside of her,” Williams tells Tudum. “It’s only when the people she loves are affected that she taps into her true power. We see that begin to surface after Rain gets hurt, but it fully shifts when her sister is pulled into this world during Part 2.”
By the end of the second batch of episodes, the tables have turned: Kimmie is about to marry the Bellarie patriarch, Horace, whose health is in decline — meaning she’ll soon be in charge of the family fortune.
“Most of us don’t change just because we want to. We change because we have to,” Williams adds. “And for survivors of abuse, especially trafficking, it’s not as simple as just walking away. The trauma runs deep, and the threats are very real. Kimmie had to be pushed to the absolute edge before she could make the choice to fight back, and for her, that moment was when her sister was taken. She was willing to risk anybody and everything to protect her. It shows just how much her sister means to her, and knowing all she endured to get to this limit just shows how much inner strength she had been [suppressing] in order to survive this whole time.
“I think a lot of people can relate to that in different ways. There’s always a moment — whether in a relationship, at work, or within ourselves — where we hit a breaking point and say, enough. But for Kimmie, it’s more than just snapping. She found her power.”
If you’re dying for more episodes, that’s by design. “I’m always trying to write these cliff-hangers, where people are going, ‘Wait, did you see this?’ ” says Perry. “I want people talking about it around the watercooler, and on [social media] … and just loving it.”
Catch up on Season 1 of the series now, only on Netflix.
