Actress Kim Coles said the “Living Single” producers threatened to write fat jokes into scripts if she didn’t lose weight.
On an episode of ReLiving Single podcast, Coles opened up about the behind-the-scenes pressure she faced while starring on the hit show. Coles, 63, and co-host Erika Alexander, 49, discussed the season two episode “Crappy Birthday,” where Khadijah (Queen Latifah), blindfolded and surrounded by luggage on a chaotic Atlantic City road trip, responds to a remark about the car’s weight with, “You better not be looking at me.”
“It is a fat joke,” Alexander acknowledged.
“We didn’t do a lot of that on this show, and I’m grateful that we didn’t do a lot of that on this show because I gained weight every year. And we could have a whole conversation about [it],” Coles said in response. “I’m surprised we let that one go.”
Alexander admitted that a few “fat jokes” did slip in on some of the earlier scripts, but Queen Latifah put a stop to it.
Queen Latifah defended Kim Cole
“Latifah made it really clear, like, ‘We’re not going to be doing that,’ and then they disappeared,” Coles remembers.
Coles added, “I would get a call at the beginning of every season to my manager saying, ‘Kim Coles has to lose some weight. She has to lose some weight. She has to lose some weight.’”
This is the latest in a storehouse full of unsavory stories of Hollywood’s narrow and toxic view of beauty, which was and remains Eurocentric.
Coles said the threat came with the reasoning that “her friends wouldn’t say anything” if her weight changed. The pressure, she admitted, affected her deeply. “There is an expectation… of what they think sexy is. I had a really hard time as I was gaining weight and feeling as if everybody was staring.”
Alexander reaffirmed “See, that’s — you have to have willing collaborators.” “But, you know, the sad part is it got in your mind because I do remember that you went on a very concerted effort throughout the series to keep the image that they wanted.”