Stanis (left) and Jackson at the 2006 BET Awards.M. Caulfield/WireImage
“The world had never seen anything like that,” Stanis says. “To this very day, when I see that scene, I get goosebumps. I just love the way little Janet handled that. And when she did that ‘No, mommy. No, mommy. No, mommy,’ I said, ‘Oh babe, don’t say that.’ My tears. I can’t watch that scene.”
“One of the things thatNorman [Lear, who developedGood Times]said about her character, he said, ‘I didn’t hire her because she was just a Jackson,'” Stanis says. “In other words, ‘I hired her because she was a Jackson, but I really hired her because she was a good actress.'”
Jackson (left) and Ja’Net DuBois on Good Times in 1977.CBS/Getty
A Brooklyn native who studied at Juilliard, Stanis says her working relationship with Janet led to a personal relationship with both her co-star and her famous family.
“We met all of the Jacksons and they all were like that. My mother and myself and my daughters, we would go over to their mom’s house, and we would play Uno. They were just regular, wonderful people,” she shares. “I love Mrs. Jackson.”
Though people recognize her now for her current role, to fans ofGood Times, both the ones who watched it back in the day and younger ones who’ve discovered it on Peacock, where all six seasons currently stream, she’ll always be Thelma Evans.
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“I was doing plays for years betweenGood Timesand Nee Nee Duncan,” Stanis says. “And every play that I did, every character that I did, my audience would come to me, and I would sign their book or whatever they gave me, and I signed ‘BernNadette Stanis.’ They would say, ‘Put “Thelma” down there, girl. Put ‘Thelma’ down there!’ So every time I signed my name, I had to put ‘Thelma.'”
source: people.com
