Singer and actress Reneé Lawless talks about how much she learned from working with Tyler Perry on 'The Haves and the Have Nots' and how it changed her life.
Best known for her role as Katheryn Cryer in Tyler Perry's 'The Haves and the Have Nots', Lawless talks about her career and opens up about how she survived breast cancer and was able to stay positive and hopeful during the treatment. Hear the rest of Lawless' interview on the Award-winning Lifestyle Magazine during the week of August 7, 2022. Watch the full episode here... (coming soon)
Watch Lifestyle Magazine each week, featuring special guests and our team with Roy Ice, Mike Tucker, Marie Michel, Dr. Sharmini Long and Lynell LaMountain to help you "live your best life possible". Watch previous episodes on demand on our Roku, AppleTV, Amazon Fire TV channels as well as at www.lifestyle.org. For a list of networks and other places to watch on tv visit www.lifestyle.org
Many know you from Tyler Perry's The Haves and The Have Nots, but you've been doing quite a
bit of work. What was it like working on The Haves and The Have Nots? It was very much a
life-changing experience for me. I'd had a predominantly a solid theater background that
I'm very proud of, and I was very blessed. The whole audition process, how I even got the audition,
is a great story for another dime. But just to say, I hate to use a cliche, dream come true,
because not only was I in a show that had such an incredible ensemble cast,
and we were an ensemble, I can't emphasize that enough, but I had the privilege of learning so
much from my amazing writer-director, Tyler Perry. I gained a wealth of knowledge in a very short
amount of time. It was baptism by fire, and I realized every day I had to show up. But the
love and the family and the community that I gained in the eight years on that show
has forever changed me. What are some of the things that you think that you learned
through that experience? I learned to trust. We shoot very fast. Our show, we shoot 20 episodes
in two and a half weeks. The average one-hour drama takes usually eight to ten days to shoot.
We were shooting 22 hours in two and a half weeks. You got to come prepared. You got to show up,
and it's about a hundred. By the time we went off the air, we were at 150 pages a day. Oh my word.
And I would shoot, there was one day I shot 13 episodes in one day. All of my scenes from 13
episodes in one day. And a lot of times were one and done takes. It was like being on theater.
And unless it's an all-skate, which I consider four or more people, and even on all skates,
he had so many cameras on set, we could get all the shots in one. If I had a phone conversation
or a two-person conversation, it was a one-take done. And you had to trust your director that he
got the take he wanted. You had to trust yourself that you could bring it. And you had to trust your
castmates that we were all on the same page. Tyler's an actor himself. So he knew how to speak
the language. He understood the frustrations and the stuff that the actors are going through.
So he knew how to convey what he wanted and get exactly what he wanted.
