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Daphne Maxwell Reid
Ernie Hudson
Hill Harper
Sam Greenlee
Topper Carew

Daphne Maxwell Reid

Daphne Maxwell Reid is known as Aunt Viv, the matriarch on NBC's hit comedy, "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air". She is also known for her role of mortician/embalmer Hannah Griffin on the CBS comedy series "Frank's Place" in which she co-starred with her husband, Tim Reid. She teamed up with Tim again when she starred as Mickie Dennis on "Snoops" for CBS. In 1998-99, she played the bawdy hooker Eartha on Showtime’s “Linc’s” which was created and produced by her husband and shot at New Millennium Studios in Virginia and Paramount Studios. Currently, she reoccurs as Mrs. Hunter on UPN’s “Eve”.

With her husband, actor/writer/producer Tim Reid, and two other Virginia businessmen, Reid co-founded and is a principal partner in New Millennium Studios, the first full-service film studio in Virginia. The first of three phases of a 60-acre project including a 15,000 square foot soundstage, a state-of-the-art post production facility and a 25-acre back-lot was completed and opened on July 12, 1997. Reid has served as New Millennium Studios’ COO and Business Affairs principal, helping with designing, building and growing the new company from the ground up to a $7 million facility in six years, including over $1.5 million in revenues in 2001.

To date, New Millennium Studios’ founders have produced two feature films, Asunder; and For Real, both of which Ms. Reid served as Executive Producer; a television series, Linc’s; a syndicated television special, American Legacy Television, which has become a Video Collection for Blockbuster, Inc; over 40 commercials; and have hosted numerous television and feature films shot at their facility. Low cost, quality content Creation is the focus of the venture and the ownership and distribution/exploitation of intellectual properties is the goal. Toward that effort, New Millennium Studios has created Obsidian Home Entertainment to distribute film titles both theatrically and in home video/DVD. The new Television division at New Millennium is creating original programming for the new cable network, TV One including the “Cowboys of Color” and “Gospel Challenge” series.

Reid used her production talents to market an innovative new project for the McCall Pattern Company in 1992 when she created, produced and starred in a four video and four-pattern kit called "Suddenly You're Sewing, with Daphne Maxwell Reid", that actually teaches you how to sew. With monthly visits as a celebrity presenter on QVC TV, Maxwell Reid sold over 10,000 kits to the home-shopping viewer. Through fabric and craft outlets she sold another 15,000 kits. The kit has been widely acclaimed and won the prestigious PCM award for the best new product of 1992 from the home sewing and craft industry. Maxwell Reid also designs a bi-annual line of patterns for the McCall Pattern Company called the Daphne Maxwell Reid Collection found in fabric stores across the country.

Reid has been honored with Doctor Of Humane Letters degrees from Norfolk State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Bethune Cookman University and has been a frequent guest speaker at numerous forums including University of Virginia Law School, St. John’s Law School, and Howard University Law School, discussing the entrepreneurial aspects of the entertainment field.

Thirteen years ago, Daphne Maxwell Reid and her husband Tim created The Tim Reid Scholarship Foundation that raises scholarship funds annually to assist college students in the Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Virginia through the “Tim Reid Celebrity Weekend” of golf & tennis tournaments.

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Ernie Hudson

There are very few actors who can lay claim to a professional resume as long and varied as Ernie Hudson, but Hudson has always been a unique screen presence, capable of taking on any role. He was slimed when he co-starred as one of the Ghostbusters in two films; he played the simple-minded handyman Solomon in the box-office smash The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, for seven seasons he played Warden Glynn in the critically acclaimed HBO series “Oz,” he was the no nonsense training officer in ABC's "10-8", he recently completed work on Randy Miller's new feature Miss Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing and Charm School, where he played Blake the shy, introverted widower, and is currently reprising his role as Harry McDonald, Sandra Bullock's FBI boss in Miss Congeniality 2.

Born in Benton Harbor, Michigan, a career in show business seemed like an unlikely path for young Ernie Hudson, who was already married with a young son when he enrolled at Wayne State University as a Speech and English major. Hudson’s early ambition was to be a writer, and was for a time the resident playwright at Detroit’s Concept East, the oldest black theater company in the country at that time. Later, he founded the Actors Ensemble Theater, which allowed him and other black performers to stage and appear in their own works. After attending Wayne State, Hudson accepted a full scholarship to the Master of Fine Arts Program at Yale University. This led to a number of regional theater roles and critical acclaim, and his feature film debut in Leadbelly.

Hudson soon found himself alternating between film and television roles until 1983, when he was cast as Winston Zeddemore, the fourth member of the Ghostbusters team. The two Ghostbusters films, starring Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd, were huge box-office hits and gave Hudson a higher profile than he had ever known. He continued to work at a steady pace developing a broad and varied fan base. “Black, white, young, old, people recognize me from a wide variety of movies. I haven’t worked in just one genre, and my roles have varied as well.”
Hudson’s subsequent screen roles included parts in Weeds with Nick Nolte, Leviathan, Sugar Hill, The Cowboy Way, Speechless, No Escape, The Substitute, Basketball Diaries and The Hand that Rocks the Cradle.
"Oz" series co-creator Tom Fontana had worked with Hudson when he guest-starred on eight episodes of “St. Elsewhere” years ago, and cast him as Warden Leo Glynn, the fair-minded warden of the high-tech experimental unit of a maximum-security prison. “Oz” was one of HBO’s signature programs and ran for seven seasons. “It’s a hard show to watch because of the brutal nature of prison life, but I do think it made a very strong statement and the writing was very powerful.” Hudson won the International Press Academy Golden Satellite Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Drama Series for his work on “Oz.”

For someone with over 100 film and television credits on his resume, Ernie Hudson still considers his biggest challenges ahead of him. "Acting is what I do. At the beginning, it might have been out of necessity, but I love it, I’m fascinated by it. To me acting is a journey filled with incredible discoveries. Getting old will never be an issue for me as long as I can explore the parts I want to play."

When he’s not working, Hudson likes to spend time at home with his wife Linda and sons, Andrew and Ross.

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Hill Harper

Hill Harper, an accomplished film, television and stage actor, portrays Dr. Sheldon Hawkes in the CBS drama series CSI: New York, which will debut Fall 2004. Harper recently co-starred as an ambitious undercover FBI operative on the CBS series The Handler, alongside Emmy Award nominee Joe Pantoliano. The role earned him a 2004 Golden Satellite Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.

He received critical acclaim for his performance in The Visit, a story of two brothers who are forced to come together when the younger sibling, played by Harper, who is HIV positive, is sentenced to death row for a crime he seemingly did not commit. His performance, which Daily Variety called ‘riveting,’ earned him a Best Actor nomination by the Independent Spirit Awards. He has also been recognized by the NAACP Image Awards with a nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the CBS series City of Angels.

Harper stars in the upcoming HBO movie Lackawanna Blues, which is based on the critically acclaimed stage play by Ruben Santiago-Hudson. He also has a lead role in the independent film Love, Sex and Eating the Bones, which was accepted into the Toronto International, Palm Springs, and Pan African film festivals. This intriguing film won “Best Canadian First Feature Film” in the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival and both “Best Feature” and “Audience Favorite” in the 2004 Pan African Film Festival. He has also completed work on the independent film America Brown, which was accepted into the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival. Harper's other screen credits include: Loving Jezebel, The Nephew (with Pierce Brosnan), The Skulls (with Joshua Jackson), In Too Deep (with Omar Epps, L.L. Cool J. and Nia Long), Beloved, Hav' Plenty, He Got Game (with Denzel Washington), and Get on the Bus. Other films include Zooman (with Louis Gossett Jr., Charles S. Dutton and CCH Pounder), Full Court Press (with Ellen Burstyn and Taye Diggs) and One Red Rose, which he also co-wrote, for Showtime.

As a television actor, Harper has had numerous guest starring roles. He recently appeared on recurring episodes of Showtime’s Soul Food and guest starred on HBO’s The Sopranos. He also starred in the CBS mini-series Mama Flora's Family and the UPN Network comedy/drama Live Shot. Other guest appearances include: ER, NYPD Blue, Murder One, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Married...With Children.

Harper's stage credits include appearances in off-Broadway productions of "Your Handsome Captain", "Freeman," and David Mamet's "American Buffalo." He completed a starring run of Jessica Hagedorn's "Dogeaters" at New York's Joseph Papp Public Theatre.

Harper graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with a Bachelor of Arts degree and graduated with a J.D. (cum laude) from Harvard Law School, as well as with a Masters in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government. He is a full-time member of Boston's Black Folk's Theater Company, one of the nation's oldest and most respected African American traveling theater troupes. Harper’s Bazaar wrote, “You might expect Hill Harper to be the next actor vying for the presidency... but he has other things on his agenda.”

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Sam Greenlee

Over the course of his career, Sam Greenlee has been a novelist, poet, screenwriter, journalist, teacher, and talk show host. Born in Chicago on July 13, 1930, he attended Chicago public schools. At age fifteen, Greenlee participated in his first sit-in and walked in his first picket line. His social activism continues to this day.

In 1952, Greenlee received his B.S. in political science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and the following year he attended law school. Deciding against a law career, he transferred to the University of Chicago, studying international relations from 1954 to 1957. In 1957, he began a seven year career with United States Information Agency as a Foreign Services Officer, serving in Iraq, East Pakistan, Indonesia, and Greece, and in 1958, he was awarded the Meritorious Service Award for bravery during the Baghdad revolution.

Greenlee's first and most well known novel, The Spook Who Sat by the Door, was published in 1968. This prize-winning novel quickly became an underground favorite for its fictionalization of an urban-based war for African American liberation. Greenlee co-wrote a screenplay adaptation of the novel, and in 1973 The Spook Who Sat by the Door was released on film. The film was an overnight success when it was released and was then unexpectedly taken out of distribution.

Greenlee has written numerous novels, stage plays, screenplays, poems. He recently moved back to Chicago after several years of voluntary exile in Spain and West Africa and is currently hosting a radio talk show program.

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Topper Carew

Topper was born and raised in Boston. He initially attended Howard University Architectural School but ended up at Yale where he both taught and earned a Bachelors and Masters degree in Architecture. In addition, he has had fully supporting fellowships at MIT and from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

He started his film career by making documentaries about the relationship between people and architecture and by learning to teach film to inner city kids. In the early days, he would submit film to festivals “just for the fun of it.” The films won lots of awards. In four years at WGBH in Boston, he produced several national series for PBS ("Say Brother" – national edition, "Rebop I & II", and "Tonight from Harvard Square"). From there, he founded a non-profit indie company, Rainbow TV Works that produced series and movies that were broadcast on PBS, HBO, Showtime and The Disney Channel. Other projects have aired in prime time on ABC, NBC, and Fox. His theatrical films include DC Cab for Universal Pictures and Talkin Dirty After Dark for New Line Cinema. One of his prime time series, Martin, for Fox, made it all the way to syndication.

Topper has received numerous awards including 4 NAACP Image Awards, and a People’s Choice Award. He has produced 8 national television series, 10 independent documentaries, 3 theatrically-released films, 15 movies for television and 300 live concerts.

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