"I couldn't wear makeup. Had to be home at a certain time," Marla Gibbs' daughter Angela says, attesting to her tough love.
Marla Gibbs spent 11 seasons portraying Florence Johnston, The Jeffersons' stern maid, and made her name as well as garnered five Emmy nominations. She naturally took that same attitude to her on-screen relationship with future Oscar winner Regina King in her subsequent project as the star of NBC's 227, which ran on NBC from 1985 to 1990 and depicted the daily life of a middle-class Black family in Washington, D.C.
On 227, Gibbs "fought for Regina [to be cast]," the actress recalls to PEOPLE. "She had light brown hair and light eyes and she really looked like Hal." Gibbs had pleasant memories of working with King, who is now 52, despite the fact that their on-screen mother-daughter relationship's lines were sometimes blurred off-screen. "Regina went to regular school while she was on the show, and her friends would tell her the clothes her character wore made her look like a doofus," Gibbs remembers with a laugh.
"I had to tell her, 'Now, look, do you want to be on TV? Or do you want to be with your friends, watching TV?' You're not dressing the way you want to dress; you're dressing the way I make you dress. We can have an argument about it if you want to.' She never forgot that," Gibbs said.
Gibbs claims that one lesson she taught through her tough love was how to have a successful career. "Sometimes she'd come to ask me if the clothes made her look too [young]," says Gibbs. "And I'd say, 'I'll tell you one thing: If you get too old, [the producers] are going to send your behind to college, and you won't be on the show anymore! So be young as long as you can," she explained.
Angela Gibbs, who presently plays the lead role in the ABC sitcom Not Dead Yet, can attest to her mother Gibbs' strict discipline methods. "You see how she was with Regina! She was strict! " says the 68-year-old actress and producer, whose credits also include Bounce's Finding Happy, HBO's Hacks, and Adult Swim's Black Jesus. "I couldn't wear makeup. Had to be home at a certain time. If I was on a date and had to be home at 10 p.m., she was there, standing on the porch."
Like King, Angela praises her mother for providing a good example at home and acting with unwavering integrity in the business. "In this business, especially as Black artists, you wait so long for something to happen, you get the job, and here comes the money. You figure, 'Down the line I'll put my foot down, but right now I need to give in,'" says Angela. "But if you play the game too hard, the game will play you. My mother was not going to play the game."
References:
https://people.com/tv/marla-gibbs-remembers-regina-king-tough-love-227/
Cover Image Source: (L) Getty Images | JC Olivera ; (R) Getty Images | Frazer Harrison
