by Kim Fields
Then Kim came back to Earth.
* * *
As my senior year at Pepperdine neared, I thought about taking the LSAT. I considered applying to business school at Clark Atlanta. As much as I loved acting, I wanted job security—and security, in general. But the thing was, I loved acting. I had done it almost my entire life, nearly twenty years, and it was not something I wanted to give up, no matter how much I toyed with alternatives. Admitting that to myself caused me to take a sober, realistic look at Jonathan and at us, and at a potential future. I made lists. I prayed. And ultimately I cried.
I cried because I knew where my comfort zone was and where it ended.
I cried because he was an incredible man.
I cried because I loved him.
And I cried because one day I picked up the phone and told him that we needed to talk.
* * *
I had such a difficult time admitting the truth to myself, I couldn’t imagine saying it to Jonathan. Nor could he believe what he was hearing after he arrived at my apartment and sat down on the sofa next to me. Yet there I was, breaking up with him. In tears, I explained that as much as I wanted us to go the distance, I was out of my comfort zone when I thought about the future. He was set on pursing his dreams as an entrepreneur, and while I would never ask him to change or compromise for me, I planned to continue to act, which meant we’d both be swinging without a net and that was too much uncertainty for me.
I had no idea whether I was making the right decision. I spoke from a place of love and honesty, and I let Jonathan know that I was terribly conflicted. My head said one thing while my heart said another. All I could do was trust in a higher power and make sure I had lots of Kleenex nearby.
For a long time afterward, I was sad and lonely. At events, someone from our circle inevitably came up to me and asked, “Why did you break Johnny’s heart?” Mutual friends like politician Cleo Fields let me know how Jonathan was doing. And then there was Jonathan’s incredible father. Several times I crossed paths with Reverend, who stopped, shook his head with mock disappointment, and said, “Oh, you.” Then, of course, I got a smile and a hug.
I really wanted to be the cool girlfriend.
I turned out to be the opposite, I suppose. Or maybe not. I was myself and that was all I could be, and really, looking back, it was the best I could be.
But I was barely twenty years old. What did I know? I still had my whole life to figure out.
9
Experimental
One day early in my senior year, I walked into Pepperdine’s television studio and got an idea. Thanks to my major in TV and film production, I had access to all the tools needed to make a TV show: cameras, lights, microphones, and free student labor. Pausing by a monitor, I saw the equipment nearby and thought, What can I do with all that? What about a talk show?
The idea made sense. Whenever I’ve had a problem or felt lost, I have received the same advice: go talk to people. See what they have to say. So I wrote a treatment for a talk show called Campus Spotlight, pitched my professor, and soon was putting together a crew and organizing production meetings. The best part? I got permission to shoot the talk show in the Smothers Theatre. Even better was the distraction. For me, there’s no better medicine for a broken heart than work.
With talented classmates (like my friend Mark Durel) helping me produce the show, we designed a set with two large, purple futon chairs and a backdrop with large letters that spelled KIM. It looked great. We also put together a band that included our fellow classmate Montell Jordan as the vocalist and my friend Darryl M. Bell, who was fresh off his TV series A Different World, as the bandleader. Seeing everything come together made me feel like I could stitch myself back together, too.
Then there was the matter of guests. To book the show, I opened my personal address book. Blair Underwood was the first person I called, and the first to say yes. Jason Bateman said he was in, too. At an NBC party, I had introduced myself to Betty White, who was a Golden Girl at the time. I reached out to her team and asked if she would be a guest. “Let me know where and when,” she told them to tell me. Gladys Knight said the same thing. Boxing champion Sugar Ray Leonard also came on—which was super big: it was the day after he fought Roberto Durán in Las Vegas. “I don’t do any media right after a fight,” he said. “But I’m doing this for you, Kim.”
Even family friend and surrogate uncle, the late and wonderful E. J. Jackson, a pillar of charitable good work in the community, offered his limousine service. For free! And so it went. It seemed like there was a group of people out there, some who I knew, others who I reached out to for the first time, but they saw me and thought, “Baby girl is grown up. She’s in college now. We’re going to support her.”
My favorite “get” was Whoopi Goldberg. One day I was driving through Malibu Canyon and saw Whoopi driving behind me in her black Jeep. I thought, I gotta get her on the show. It was late afternoon, and traffic was backed up. I kept staring at her through my rearview mirror, wondering how I could make contact with her. I considered stopping abruptly and causing her to crash into me. Another, less desperate option was to hop out of my car and run back to hers if traffic backed up badly enough, which it didn’t. Then, just before the freeway on-ramp, she pulled into the gas station. Hallelujah, I thought.
I whipped around the corner and pulled up to the pump next to her. “Oh my gosh, hi, it’s me, Kim Fields. God, I can’t believe you’re right here. I always wanted to meet you. What a coincidence!” Blah-blah-blah. I was nervous. The friendliness poured out of me. Luckily her Jeep needed a lot of gas. And before she pulled away, I had a yes—and her phone number. I was blown away.
The show was a hit on campus. Taping days filled the Smothers Theatre with hundreds of students who enjoyed being able to see these stars up close and listen to intimate conversations. I prided myself on having a unique angle. Having been in the business and in the media since early childhood, I wanted to ask questions I’d never been asked and have conversations that interested me. I focused on growing up, schooling, values, identifying and exploring passions, discovery of self, and lessons learned. No one benefited more than me. I found a voice in front of an audience, and in a way, I found myself.
Not that I was ever lost. But post-breakup, I was sad, confused, and wondering where my decision to split with Jonathan was going to lead. I had spent nearly two years going in one direction. Then I slammed on the brakes and veered left and found myself at the end of a cul-de-sac. The show proved therapeutic. It gave me direction and confidence. And a voice. I got to ask the questions I needed to ask myself. I also got answers, guidance, and wisdom. And I began to feel empowered and excited about the future.
“I can do this,” I told myself. “Whatever this is going to be.”
* * *
I celebrated my twenty-first birthday at a Santa Monica club with a mix of college and show business friends, including the guys from New Edition. A few glasses of champagne led to several uninhibited whirls across the dance floor and into what seemed the next phase of my life. My birthday was followed by graduation from Pepperdine, which was memorialized. A picture of me in my cap and gown, cheering amongst my classmates was Jet magazine’s Photo of the Week, which made me feel as if all of black America were proud of their baby girl.
Following school, I moved into an apartment with my friend Theresa in Studio City.
Starting in June 1990, I took advantage of not having any commitments for the first time since I began to work at age seven. My schedule was mine, and luckily I was an energetic self-starter. I took a writing course at the American Film Institute. I produced a children’s gospel album with mom and our family friend Carvin Winans. I auditioned for TV shows. And at the end of the year, I hit the road in the national touring company of the play One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show.
We opened in Detroit, and the daily routine put me in my comfort zone. Nightly applause did not hurt, either. After one performance, I received a note from
a gentleman wanting to come backstage and meet me. Security checked him out and gave me a thumbs-up. He turned out to be a professional football player with the Lions. He had seen the play with his family. We talked for a while, and then he called me later that night and we talked into the wee hours.
He was smart, sophisticated, handsome, a professional athlete, and a little bit of a bad boy, so the attraction was obvious. What really surprised me was the strong connection we seemed to have from the get-go. From that first conversation, it seemed like we’d never run out of things to say to each other. He sent flowers to my hotel room often and visited when we opened in Chicago. This was on top of more flowers, notes, and late-night phone calls when I got back to my room from the theater. I was smitten.
The relationship burned hot and heavy into spring as the play moved to Houston and Baltimore. Somewhere in that time period, he purchased his first home in a Michigan suburb. It fronted a lake and was gorgeous. He referred to it as “our home” and made comments like, “I’m buying it for us.” All my romantic fantasies seemed to be coming true. Then, on the eve of a visit he was making to see me in Baltimore, where the play had received its best reviews yet, he canceled his visit. He said the house was having some work done and he had to be there.
Well, there’s work and then there’s work. After the next night’s show, I called him, as was our routine. We spoke every night after I got back to the hotel. It was about eleven-thirty, but instead of hearing his deep, familiar voice, I heard a woman answer his phone. I was stunned. I knew his sister, and it was not her voice. “Can I talk to him, please?” I said. And this chick said, “Well, he isn’t available.”
“Oh?” I said. “You tell him it’s his girlfriend. Who is this?”
There was silence. Then, “Well, he’s not available.”
I waited. I heard people whispering in the background. Finally, he got on and I went off. “Who is that?” I said. “What is happening? What are you doing?”
He said, “I don’t need to explain this to you.”
I said, “What? Who is that in my house—since you have always said that’s our house?”
He said, “Well, this is just what I’m doing right now.”
I felt light-headed. “What?”
He said, “I knew the work it would take to keep you, and I don’t want to do that work.”
Normally very cool and collected, even in heated moments, I turned into a stick of dynamite with a fuse that quickly burned to the end. “Knew the work?” I said, before slamming the receiver onto the phone. I was angrier than I had ever been in my life. Like David Banner turning into the Incredible Hulk, I whipped around, reared my fist back, and punched it clean through the door of my hotel bedroom. Then I ran downstairs, out of the hotel, and into the night.
It was raining, and the Baltimore harbor was beautiful, so pathetically beautiful. Lights shimmered, boats bobbed in the water, and I walked across the pavement, sobbing until I could not tell my tears from the rain. It was out of every movie where the leading lady gets her heart broken and she runs outside into the rain, crying. I was so crushed. I mean gorilla crushed.
This was one of those moments when I looked up and wondered how God could have left me like this.
As it turned out, He hadn’t.
10
An Indie Spirit
I finished the tour. The performances that I thought I couldn’t get through when I was overwrought with emotion following the end of my love affair turned out to be the best therapy. I thrived on the routine and of course the applause. Whoever said the show must go on must have been part psychologist. Then there was more healing when I returned home.
It was spring 1992, and the city was in flames from rioting after four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. After the smoke cleared, Bishop Charles Blake, the pastor of my beloved West Angeles Church, organized teams of people to start the cleanup process. I was deployed to a shopping center whose stores had been broken into and looted. It was a shock. My mom once had a performing arts school there. We spent several days cleaning and painting stores.
If there is a recipe for fixing the problems we all face, large and small, it has to start as we did there in South-Central LA, with people coming together, connecting, and helping each other get back up. As we worked, I could feel myself rising from the ashes, too. On a social level, we could only take on this one little corner, but in a personal sense, I was reenergized and after a few more months, I knew what I wanted to do next: make independent films.
I had gone to the movies with friends to see John Singleton’s riveting debut Boyz n the Hood. A few weeks later, I saw Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever. Then I saw Mario Van Peebles in New Jack City. All were inspired movies, and I felt like I had gone to school to do work like this, too. I had ideas and connections, but it was hard to get projects properly backed. I was constantly frustrated. I would live and breathe an idea and then see it stall for no apparent reason. That’s the arts for you.
Eventually I found a home at Kolbeco Productions, a small production company run by two friends, Mark Kolby and Rob Johnson. They produced live shows, commercials, and music videos. Malcolm-Jamal Warner directed a rap video for them. After they took me in, I directed a video for gospel singer Vickie Winans and worked on several others for young artists. The Hughes Brothers also did a couple things for them.
Their office had a cool, positive, and creative vibe. Lots of creative people came in for meetings or to hang out. I liked having a place to go where I could meet with writers, talk about ideas, and collaborate. Like everyone else, I knew that I had to keep throwing paint on the canvas if I wanted to be an artist. One day my roommate’s boyfriend, Marty, who was also part of the Kolbeco group, recommended meeting a friend of his. “David Green,” he said. “You guys should get together. He’s a writer and he wants to get his stuff out.”
Days later, David and I met for the first of several times and hit it off creatively. He had recently moved to Los Angeles from Houston. He was smart, passionate about film, and focused on a career. One afternoon he got ahold of me and said he knew of an independent film festival that coming weekend in Westwood, near the UCLA campus, and thought we should check it out. The films looked good, he said, and there would be people to meet. I said sure, and then, as always, we talked about ideas.
That weekend, David picked me up. It was drizzling when his black Mazda pulled up in front of my apartment building. I walked out the lobby doors and toward the street as if I were slow-stepping down a Fashion Week catwalk. Though David and I were strictly friends, I still wanted to show off my outfit—a fitted blazer over a black bodysuit. The fact that I—someone who’d struggled with weight and body image—would wear a bodysuit was an event, and David picked up on that. “Hey, look at you!” he said approvingly.
I laughed. “Sir, you are gazing at a SlimFast success story.”
With that, I told him the long story of how I came to fit into that outfit, starting with when I was in college and put on the proverbial freshman fifteen. I added to those fifteen pounds my sophomore year. I was miserable. I tried Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, and other weight-loss programs. I was on one of those restrictive programs when I went to an event with my friend Blair Underwood.
It was a dress-up occasion in a fancy hotel ballroom. Dinner was served and my diet allowed me four ounces of protein, vegetables, and a roll if I had not eaten any bread earlier in the day—which I hadn’t. In fact, I hadn’t eaten anything all day. I wanted to be able to eat at the event, especially bread. As soon as the waiter brought my roll, I cut it into dozens of little pieces, the better to savor every bite, every morsel of guilt-filled gluten on my tongue.
Midway through the meal, I went to the bathroom and when I came back to the table my roll was gone. I saw the waiter walking away with my bread plate. “He took my roll?” I said in a panicked voice. “Where’s my roll?” It was an odd reaction, an overreaction one could say, and Blair looked a
t me accordingly. “You want another one?” he asked calmly. I was on my feet, hands on my hips, shaking my head. “No, I can’t eat a whole other one,” I said. “I rationed that one out.”
Blair was confused. “What?”
“Never mind,” I said.
My roll was gone; my dinner was ruined. The saving grace was that I was hanging with Blair.
Not too long after that event, I tried the SlimFast diet. Word got back to the company, and I signed an endorsement deal with them and made a commercial. I was even asked to be one of the girls in a calendar for a black student organization on campus. In the photo, I wore cutoff shorts and a short-sleeved, denim-collared shirt and leaned against a shiny sports car. It was glorious because I did not think of myself as one of those sexy calendar girls.
“And here I am in this bodysuit,” I said to David, finishing my story. “Continuing to enjoy the low-cal fruits of my SlimFast success.”
* * *
We kept up our happy, get-to-know-each-other chatter as David pulled away from my building and started us toward the film festival. It was drizzling again. He turned onto Sepulveda Boulevard, heading south. We went up the hill and through the tunnel where the San Diego Freeway was on our left and the Skirball Cultural Center was on our right. The road was under construction; several areas of the pavement were covered with giant metal plates that made the ride bumpy. It did not seem to matter; between the rain and the traffic, no one was going fast.
I liked the CD David was playing on the radio. “Who is this?” I asked. He nodded toward the CD cover, which I picked up. “Seal? Huh, I’ve never heard of him before,” I said. David stared straight ahead, paying full attention to the road as he talked to me, and never once, not even for a millisecond, did the expression on his face register that something awful was about to happen.