The Black Mafia Family was one of the more infamous drug distributors and traffickers of the 1990s and early 2000s. They also developed an entertainment side hustle that promoted artists and held extravagant parties in Atlanta. Then it all came tumbling down in 2004 and the feds moved in to shut BMF down.
Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, executive producer of Starz’s drug-infused “Power” franchise, found the story of “BMF” fascinating and decided to turn it into a series. Not to say the series is strictly autobiographical, with a warning up front that this is a mix of fiction and nonfiction.
Shot in metro Atlanta, “BMF” started its first season Sept. 26 in Detroit in the late 1980s when the two Flenory brothers were teens just starting in the drug business, with the younger, more academic one Terry “Southwest T” Flenory (played by Da’Vinchi of “Grown-ish”) initially hiding the truth of his involvement from their religious, well-meaning parents (Russell Hornsby and Michole Briana White.)
And in an intriguing casting choice, the leader Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory is played by his son Demetrius Flenory Jr. This is similar to the way O’Shea Jackson Jr. played his father Ice Cube in the 2015 film “Straight Outta Compton.”
In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 50 Cent said he was having trouble finding the right person to play “Big Meech” and eventually discovered “his son was right there.”
50 Cent moved Flenory Jr. from Atlanta where he was residing to Los Angeles to give him a crash course in acting and helped him get a role on HBO’s “Euphoria” before joining “BMF.”
“He really did the work,” 50 Cent said. “The innocence in him hasn’t been stolen. You can see the vulnerability in his performance. It just worked out.”
“There was a lot of pressure on me from the beginning,” Flenory Jr. said in a Zoom press interview earlier this month. “But once I learned the foundations of acting and learned the challenges my dad faced... and put myself in those circumstances, I felt like everything came out naturally.”
Flenory Jr. said it helped that he and Da’Vinchi “clicked on the first day. The brothers have be natural. We had to have a good relationship off screen to work on screen.”
Flenory Jr.’s dad Big Meech remains in prison, serving a 30-year sentence at an Oregon prison, but is eligible for parole in 2028 after a judge recently shaved three years off. Terry, his younger brother, was released from prison last year due in part to COVID-19.
Flenory Jr. said his father did give him advice before he joined the show. “Plenty of it,” he said. “He told me everything to do and everything not to do. Down to how he wanted his shoes tied to how he ordered his pants. He wanted people to feel connected and understand what it was like back then in Detroit.”
Da’Vinchi said he did extensive research, including talking to Terry and various family members to “soak it all in.”
“Like Marcus Aurelius said, ‘Poverty is the mother of all crime’,” Da’Vinchi said. “These guys are humans. They had hearts. It’s not like they were given the same opportunities as other people.”
Randy Huggins, “BMF” show runner and fellow Detroit native, said he bonded with the two main characters since he’s only three or four years older than them. “I was familiar with what was going on,” he said. “The places they went, I went. I was just in the nosebleed seats. The fashion they wore, I wanted to wear it but my mom wouldn’t buy it!”
The show begins in the 1980s with the origins of BMF, before it really hit its stride as an operation by the 1990s. Huggins wanted to capture that ‘80s time period when automobile factories were shutting down and crack cocaine was ascendant, sowing both chaos and opportunity in many neighborhoods. He also wanted to capture the area’s food, fashion and music of that time, including early techno music ― not just hip-hop and Motown.
If Starz gives the show a renewal, the series will eventually show the brothers clash and Terry relocate to Los Angeles in 2001 to run his own drug operation. Big Meech kept the Detroit and Atlanta cocaine hubs active while building the entertainment sector in the early 2000s.
“I could have started at that point because that’s how the general public knows BMF,” said 50 Cent. That big party period alone, he noted, “there could be six seasons of that.”
WHERE TO WATCH
“BMF,” 8 p.m. Sundays on Starz
About the Author
