Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker - Season 1
The series Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker, also known as Self Made for short, is a very short limited series. The series only has four episodes and that is quite exceptional today. Self Made tells the story of the first black woman to become a millionaire on her own. This determined woman, Sarah Breedlove (Octavia Spencer, Truth Be Told (2019)) knows her stuff and does exactly what she wants. And she also knows what she doesn't want. In order to realize all her ideas and wishes, Sarah will have to go through rowing and diamonds.
Sarah is married to newspaper publisher Charles Joseph Walker (Blair Underwood, When They See Us). That's where her name and the series title come from. 'The wife of C.J. Walker', because your husband's name is of course 'more important' in society in the 1910s than your own name. It is Sarah's third marriage, who has a daughter from her first marriage. Sarah works as a poor washerwoman for other wealthier families. When Sarah's hair starts to fall out little by little and she gets bald spots on her head, she meets Addie (Carmen Ejogo, Your Honor (US)). Addie solves Sarah's hair problem with a homemade product. Sarah proposes to Addie that she become a saleswoman of the product, because she sees potential. Addie, however, wants nothing to do with this and bluntly and ruthlessly rejects Sarah. Furious and disappointed by Addie's strong words, Sarah decides to release her own hair products. This soon becomes a success, much to the jealousy of Addie, who sees more and more business flowing over to competitor Sarah.
Sarah knows how to make her hair products a great success, but that does not go without a hitch
Sarah knows how to make her hair products a great success, but that does not go without a struggle. After she comes up with the plan to expand her products considerably and make an entire hairline out of them, she seems to get quite stuck in her ambitions. Sarah initially has considerable difficulty getting her products even remotely into the large stores aimed at only white women and their type of hair type. In addition, most white owners and most white moneylenders do not see any benefit in hair products aimed at black women on store shelves. But Sarah doesn't give up and that eventually pays off.
While business, and therefore also financially, is getting better for Mrs C.J. Walker, that's far from the case on the home front. Husband Charles finds it hard to accept that his wife is more successful than he is and that she brings in more money than the master of the house, or himself. His ego takes a big hit with this. He also doesn't like the fact that Sarah is more concerned with her business than with her family. Charles also feels strongly rejected by his wife when she manages to win over a large investor without his sales idea. Ultimately, all this cannot be without consequences.
The story is very interesting, the actors know how to keep your attention and a wonderful time image is given about the 1910s.
Self Made has become a fine miniseries with good portrayals by Octavia Spencer and Blair Underwood, which is also nice and short. Maybe a little too short if you ask me. The series would have benefited more from, at least, two more episodes. Then certain characters could have been developed better and storylines could have been written out more carefully. Still, this series is definitely worth watching. The story is very interesting, the actors know how to keep your attention and a wonderful time image is given about the 1910s. Apart from the shortness of the series, and the inevitable pace, there is no harm in this little history lesson. Even though I must mention that the creators have allowed themselves some historically incorrect liberties, but if you make such fine series, that is soon forgiven. We will open a history book for the real facts. Octavia Spencer is a fun actress to watch anyway. In addition, time period oriented series always do well with me. Stories about strong women or black people are also still underexposed in terms of series or films, while they can be just as interesting as series or films involving men or white characters, so Self Made is a welcome change in the series landscape.
