Catch Up With the ‘Girlfriends,’ 15 Years After the Series Finale
A decade and a half ago, on February 11, 2008, the UPN-turned-CW series Girlfriends left the airwaves without a proper goodbye. Following the writers strike that winter, The CW chose only to resume production on the series it was renewing, spurning Girlfriends fans who had followed the sitcom for eight seasons and 172 episodes.
It was an abrupt end for a TV show that broke new ground for onscreen representation, coming at a time when so many of the hit comedies of the small screen featured all-white casts.
Girlfriends sprang from the mind of creator Mara Brock Akil, who pitched a show about friendship centering a Black female perspective, as she told The Hollywood Reporter last year. “I was examining something that I sold in the room, which was that I was going to tell all the secrets of Black women, but my real secret was that we were human. And we had all these layers to us that deserve stories and deserve a place to be told,” Akil said.
“It was really special to see a story about four Black women, all whose stories were about mostly each other and not about the man they were pursuing,” star Tracee Ellis Ross told USA Today in 2020. “And at the core of the show was about the relationship between these women, and how to be a friend.”
Costar Golden Brooks added: “It seemed very novel. In actuality, we as women of color, we do these things every day. We have varied emotions. … And I just think that it was beautiful to see Mara sort of unfold and introduce that to pop culture, because you hadn’t seen it.”
Here’s what the Girlfriends cast has gotten up to in the 15 years since the show ended…
Tracee Ellis Ross (Joan Clayton)
Golden Brooks (Maya Denise Wilkes)
Brooks starred in the TV One reality series Hollywood Divas and won critical praise for her role as Jimmie Lee in the TNT limited series I Am the Night. More recently, she guest-starred in the TV shows Station 19 and The Good Doctor.
Persia White (Lynn Ann Searcy)
White recurred as Abby Bennett Wilson in the CW drama The Vampire Diaries (and married costar Joseph Morgan in 2014). She also reunited with her Girlfriends costars in an episode of Black-ish in 2019 and guest-starred on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace the following year.
Jill Marie Jones (Toni Childs-Garrett)
Jones stars as Maggie in the Allblk drama Monogamy, and she recently played Tamara Roberts in the OWN drama Delilah. Previously, she recurred as Cynthia Irving on Fox’s Sleepy Hollow and played Amanda Fisher in Starz’s Ash vs Evil Dead.
Reggie Hayes (William Jerome Dent)
In recent years, Hayes recurred as Don Todd in the CW drama Hart of Dixie and Mayor Billy Black on the same network’s superhero series Black Lightning, which Akil executive-produced. These days, he recurs as Superintendent Collins on the ABC comedy Abbott Elementary.
Khalil Kain (Darnell Wilkes)
In the past decade, Kain has guest-starred on Elementary, Person of Interest, Blue Bloods, and FBI, and he recurred as Chief Wryles in the Allblk police procedural Bronx SIU. His play Lambs to Slaughteropened off-Broadway last year.
Keesha Sharp (Monica Charles Brooks)
After Girlfriends, Sharp starred as Gigi in the TBS comedy Are We There Yet? and starred as Trish Murtaugh in the Fox series Lethal Weapon, a role for which she got an NAACP Image Award nomination. Now she’s playing Professor Harper Bonet on the Starz drama Power Book II: Ghost.
