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Sydney Tamiia Poitier Plays Queer in "Knight Rider" TV Movie
NBC's two-hour movie spin-off of the classic 1980s series Knight Rider debuted Sunday night with a lesbian/bisexual character among its four lead characters. The movie is a sequel that picks up 20 years after the end of the series about the talking car that made David Hasselhoff a household name. The movie follows the adventures of his son, Mike (Justin Bruening):
34-year-old actress Sydney Tamiia Poitier (Grindhouse, Veronica Mars) — the biracial daughter of Oscar-winning actor Sidney Poitier and Joanna Shimkus — plays Carrie Ruvai, "a tough FBI agent who doesn't see eye-to-eye with Mike."
In a Feb. 5th interview with a fan site, Poitier describes Carrie Ruvai as a woman with "a very strong sense of what's right and wrong. When she's working, she's all business. She's very tough and very strong. But she also has a real sense of fun. She enjoys herself, and she's a surfer, and she's kind of a no-nonsense, grounded, down-to-earth kind of girl." Ruvai's romantic interest in women is established early in the film. As Ruvai is at home getting ready to leave for work, she has a conversation with an unnamed blond woman in her bed, who asks Ruvai if she's OK with leaving someone she just met alone in her home. Ruvai's sexuality is not referenced or elaborated on any further in the movie. In the interview, Poitier indicated the writers weren't sure what they had planned for her character's sexual orientation:
If Knight Rider gets picked up — it could become a series as early as this fall — and Poitier's character stays gay or bisexual, she would be the only leading lesbian/bi woman of color on scripted broadcast television.
If Cashmere Mafia doesn't get renewed for another season (the last episode of its strike-shortened season airs this week), she may be the only queer woman of any ethnicity on broadcast television this fall. Visit the official Knight Rider website. |
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Hmm, interesting...
I love Sidney Poitier, and I've always been convinced that there's a gay subtext in The Defiant Ones...
... but although Tony Curtis has talked about it, I've never heard what Poitier himself has to say about gay rights. Nice to hear he's got a daughter who's supportive, though. Let's hope they make her character lesbian for a change (what is this insistence with always making the women bi or confused? I'm bisexual myself and even I get irritated with it).
I wondered if AE
I saw it last night
and I have to say I was very disapointed. There was A LOT of time on screen spent with actors not moving and just reciting dialog, or not even speaking. In fact, for a show about a car, the car itself had little screen time. Val Kilmer as the voice of the car was horrible. Justin Bruening, in my opinion, seemed to have been better suited for all of the commercials he did that aired between the movies acts than for the movie itself. He may have been going for broody, but he didn't get much past pouty. And the scene bewteen him and The Hoff at the end was excruciatingly bad acting....
Mike Traceur "Will I see you again?"
Michael Knight "I hope so" (I need the paycheck!)
It seemed to me that they had 30 minutes of written material and stretched it to 90 minutes by adding a ton of non dialog character reaction shots or Ford Commercial shots of the new KITT car on the highway.
My real opinion is this. I thought, as bad as Bionic Woman was, it had potential if the production crew could get a handle on things. Knightrider just isn't anywhere near as good as Bionic Woman was (or Plainkiller Jane for that matter). This is BAD!
Is anyone waiting for this?
Knight Rider was bad enough the first time around. Ok actually, I loved it as a kid. But do we really need a sequal?
My first thought was, I'll watch it anyway just for the gay/bi character. Then I remembered Cashmere Mafia....
- - - - - - - - - -
-It's called sarcasm.
Who doesn't blog these days?
To be honest ....
I too was a little disappionted ... I wanted some special effects, I wanted the car to be more central, instead KITT felt like a prop.
'Mike' was just wooden ... seriously. Plus I think he is too young. David Hasslehoff was older, and I think that really worked as someone with the life experience 'Michael Knight' needed ... 'Mike' just comes off as a pouty teenager than never really grew up and continued that into his 20's. He's a 'pretty-boy'.
And hearing about the shift from being lesbian to being bisexual by NBC for Sydney's character just rings HUGE warning-bells for me. Basically that means that they'll trot out having her having sex with women occasionally when it'll work for ratings (sweeps week anyone?) and otherwise just have her have sex with men and hence marginalise her sexuality.
You know, just once I would love a mainstream lesbian character on network television that is actually, you know, LESBIAN.
It was a happy suprise one
It was a happy suprise one of maybe two suprises in that whole two freaking hours long movie.
Making her character bisexual for the TV series to me sounds like a copout, but they may be joking about that so we'll see. I hope her character remains gay and if they make anyone bi it would be cool if they turned Sarah then she a Carrie hook up.
-Nathiest
live for lust die for love
Interesting
Had I known this, I may have watched...I mean, they actually showed two women in bed together? Cashmere Mafia didn't do that.
Justin Bruening's casting as the lead (watching him as Jamie on AMC during the Bianca/Frankie/Maggie years was plenty for me) and the concern that it'd turn into a two-hour infomercial for the carmaker convinced me to skip it.
Instead, I watched part of the All-Star game and then the new Brothers and Sisters on ABC.
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"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan
You didn't miss anything.
The only two women shown in bed together on Knight Rider had the main character Mike between them. Yeah, that's right...he is such a stud that two women don't mind sharing him in the same bed. But female FBI agent...we got to see her shower off after an early morning surf...come into her place, hearing the phone ring...and then chat with the unnamed blonde in her bed before leaving for the job. The only way we knew they were not bffs was from the dialogue between them. They were never shown in bed together.
Sure, it was strongly hinted at that she was other than straight...but the first thought in my mind was that if the tv movie is picked up for a series...then they will completely forget about that intro scene for the character or make her bisexual so that any bed scenes in the future will be with a man.
Oy.
I only watched as much as I did (I turned over to watch Brothers & Sisters later on) because I wanted to see if Justin (who I did watch as Jamie on AMC) could actually act or not. The jury is still out as far as I am concerned as the part and the movie, overall, did not require much acting, at all.
Sydney Tamiia Poitier Needs to Become More Active
I think it is wonderful a WOC is playing a lesbian or bi. I think Ms. Poitier should take a more active approach telling the writers to make her character a lesbian so she herself won't be confused on how to portray her character. This a major problem with the television networks,they're too busy being self-conscious about portraying LGBTQI characters and how they would come across mainstream television. They don't know children and adults know more people who are gay and don't see it as an issue. Networks need to just run with LGBTQI characters and stop thinking so much.
Knight Rider for the new generation. I think I'll stick to my old school one.
"Do I have to dial 9 to call 911?"( This quote was shared to me by a nurse who was talking about her then 14 year old daughter who asked her this while the father was suffering a heat stroke)
I think it's marvelous
Considering that my girl Lourdes Benedicto who plays Alicia Lawson got kicked to the curb by Cashmere Mafia. Still could it be a death knell to play gay or bi?
Scripting
Best. News. EVER!
No, seriously. I loved Sydney in Joan of Arcadia and Grindhouse... I think I drooled a few times. I always hoped she'd play gay, and clearly the government extracted these thoughts from my brain and sold them to the Knight Rider producers.
_____________________________________
Obsessive? Compulsive? Paranoid? Me? Never!
Re: Hasselhoff
Not Another 1
expectations
Maybe we should just not have high expectations in that kind of tv-serial/movie spin off material ..........???
Reasonable not High
Revivals of TV shows and movie sequels should not be made or survive/thrive off the crutch of lowered expectations, especially when you factor in the expense that goes into making them. A reasonable expectation is that some entertaining, original, clever shows will slip through the net and be found by interested viewers. In their efforts to find the lowest common denominator in TV programming and film making, the studios will continue to rehash old shows and challenge the discriminating viewers to find the better fare. I don't plan to settle for subpar shows, simply because they're part of a particular genre. I want the half full (if not full) glass, don't you?
Of course, KITT may get picked up and surprise us all.
For those who are curious.
Anyone wanting to see the sum total of the FBI agent's sexuality addressed in the tv movie...Knight Rider is being aired again Saturday night, February 22 on NBC...and it is in the first few minutes of the movie, so don't blink! :)
She's way cool
i like the old voice of KITT better
i didn't get a chance to watch it, though i did catch several of the previews. but i do hope they re-air it, and that it's picked up as a series this fall. as a bisexual woman, who is an avid tv watcher, i'd love to see a functional bisexual woman portrayed on tv. but since i know writers don't have a good track record at achieving such things, i hope they keep her character lesbian. at least we know television writers have, on occasion, gotten that kind of character right. i can only hope that if it's made into a series that The Hoff would make a guest appearance or two. it only makes sense!
~like a heartbeat, love keeps us strong...~
Overall it ended up being
Overall it ended up being background noise for me while I played an online computer game. I turned around to watch the scenes with the car and that's about it.
The acting on most parts was stiff because the dialogue was so formula and just plain bad. There was no mystery in this at all! Anyone could figure out everything that was about to happen but at the very least I can say Sydney was great. I thought I was imagining things in the begining of the movie!
More car, Sydney, and less frames with nothing going on and I will continue to tune in. Anyone think Justin had better on screen chemistry with "Babe"? He and the leading lady were cold fish.
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"Yo! Let's squash this beef at the Dune Sea!"
sucked. badly.
I watched this online last week for a review, and well...while I was much more pithy in my review, here I'll just say it was: summer weekend afternoon B-rated A&E-like tripe.
hmmm
more sydney...naked.
i have to agree that it sucked but it is knight rider...it would be great to see more of sydney with less clothes. i was also excited to see my school. the scenes in the library and on campus during the first 10 min or so were shot at CSUN! the Oviatt Library is actually used in a lot films and t.v. not that it's important...i just had to rep for my school. GO MATADORS!!!