If You Had To Choose Between Annalise Keating, Marie Laveau, or Olivia Pope To Get You Out Of Trouble Who Would It Be?

Viola Davis, Kerry Washington, and Angela Bassett have been or created some iconic characters that we will forever cherish this decade.

Viola Davis who plays Annalise Keating in ABC hit show ‘How To Get Away With Murder.’ Annalise Keating is a high-profile criminal defense attorney and law professor at Middleton University who maintains social prestige and navigates through a complex personality. The series starts off when Annalise chooses five of her students to work with her and they get in the middle of a murder case. Throughout the series’ course, Annalise is very protective of her students, who become her allies, and is balancing between her personal life and the public scrutiny.

Angela Bassett who plays the Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau in “American Horror Story,” is one of the greatest characters in the show history and definitely deserves a spin-off series for her character.

At the height of her power, Marie fell pregnant by her lover Bastien and could not accept the idea of death. Papa Legba appeared to her one night, offering her immortality in exchange for her soul and performing a service for him once a year. Believing their agreement to be of a sexual nature, Marie agreed to the terms and became immortal. Only after giving birth to her daughter did she learn that the service required her to sacrifice the soul of an innocent to Papa, who appears to collect the newborn infant as part of their agreement. After pleading with Papa to take her immortality away, Marie is forced to hand over the child and cries as she watches Papa depart with her daughter.

In 1834, Marie arrived at the LaLaurie house to exact her revenge on Madame Delphine LaLaurie for torturing Bastien. She tricks Delphine into drinking a “love potion” that will supposedly ensure her husband’s fidelity, but it is, in fact, a vial of her tears[2] that causes the Madame to pass out from pain. Marie discovers Bastien’s corpse in the attic and tearfully embraces her deceased lover, disfigured from having a bull’s head attached to his face.

After Delphine regains consciousness that night, Marie and an angry, black mob are gathered outside waiting for her. When she demands the return of her family, Delphine is shown the strung up corpses of her husband and three daughters, who were tortured and killed by Marie as retribution. The latter reveals that the potion Delphine drank cursed her with immortality, and her fate is to be buried in an unmarked grave for all eternity. At Marie’s command, the mob gags and chains Delphine, sealing her in a coffin that would lie undisturbed for centuries to follow.

By 1961, Marie is managing a hair salon known as Cornrow City. Cora, one of her employees, reveals that her son Henry is attending an integrated school. Marie expresses doubts about the white citizens being happy about this, and her words are proven to be true when Henry is lynched by three white men. In retaliation, Marie performs a ritual to raise an army of the undead, sending them after Henry’s murderers and brutally killing them.

Around this time, conflict arose between the voodooists and a local witch coven. The feud lasted for about ten years, until Marie and Supreme Anna Leigh Leighton sign a truce in 1971, detailing that neither side is allowed to cross into the other’s territory.

https://youtu.be/cN5GjriuS8E

Kerry Washington plays the iconic Olivia Pope in one of the greatest shows this decade, Scandal. Olivia Pope is revered as the fixer who helped United States President Fitzgerald Grant (played by Tony Goldwyn) win office. Pope is a former lawyer and White House aide. Pope “thinks fast and effectively”. Among her secrets is her affair with President Grant. Some of her employees have law degrees, but do not serve as lawyers. Instead, they are “gladiators in suits” who mollify or avert a wide array of crises.

The role is regarded as groundbreaking. According to Felicia Lee of The New York Times, Pope is the only dramatic protagonist role played by a black woman on American network television since 1974,when Teresa Graves starred as Christie Love in Get Christie Love! for one series. Among her prominent comedic predecessors, Diahann Carroll played the title role in Julia from 1968 to 1971. Pope is regarded as a post-racial character, yet possibly the most complex black female lead in television history. Although the show does not touch upon race that often, regarding her much publicized affair with Grant, Pope once said “I’m feeling a little, I don’t know, Sally Hemings-Thomas Jefferson about all this.” Pope has given Washington a role as a standard bearer for middle-class and upper middle-class, educated black women.