The Quad

Annette Brown/BET

Felicia Henderson

Annette Brown/BET
Fill 1
Fill 1
July 21, 2017
In The Mix

Northern Exposure

A BET drama breaks ground, exploring the black academic experience as seen by the North and South.

Christine Champagne

When a producer can say of a network, “We never had to explain what we were trying to do,” that’s saying a lot.

And that’s how Felicia D. Henderson feels about her experience producing The Quad for BET.

Set on the campus of an HBCU — as historically black colleges and universities are known — the drama series premiered in February and has already been picked up for a second season (latecomers can catch up on BET.com).

“I’m not saying that in a disparaging way about any other network,” clarifies Henderson, the show’s executive producer and co-creator (with Charles Holland). “But to have so many executives at BET know the HBCU experience — they all got really invested in the show. That was a new experience for me.” (In addition to Henderson and Holland, Rob Hardy is an executive producer and developed the series.)

Anika Noni Rose stars as Eva Fletcher, an Ivy League–educated northerner who takes over as president of the fictional Georgia A&M University. While she has an ally in the dean of the history department, Ella Grace Caldwell (played by Jasmine Guy, an alum of A Different World, which also portrayed HBCU life), Fletcher finds that some colleagues — including marching band director Cecil Diamond (Ruben Santiago-Hudson) and dean of students Carlton Pettiway (E.  Roger Mitchell) — are out to sabotage her.

“This is a northern black woman who thinks that because she is black, she can go down there and it will be a ‘We understand each other’ experience,” Henderson explains. “In fact, it is very different — there are those who think she’s not qualified to run the school.”

This kind of conflict hasn’t been depicted on  television before, she maintains, and shows there isn’t a  “monolithic black experience.”  While neither Henderson  (whose credits include Gossip Girl, Fringe, Moesha and Sister, Sister) nor Holland attended an HBCU, they hired HBCU grads, including three staff writers, to ensure that The Quad  accurately captured campus life.

Hardy attended Florida A&M University, as did series star Rose. “That was important to me, living and breathing authenticity,” says Henderson, who  paid for a niece and a nephew to attend Clark  Atlanta University and Morehouse College, respectively. She got to appreciate HBCU campus culture, she quips, by “popping in on them to see how my money was being spent.”


This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 6, 2017

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