Teyonah Parris handles stylised comedy without making the character feel false. We rate her comic precision and her steadiness in drama, though The Marvels leaves us wishing she had been given more to do.
Fi1m perspective
In The Marvels (2023), Teyonah Parris gives Monica Rambeau a dignity the hurried film scarcely makes time for. Her resentment of Carol Danvers is raised, then forgotten, leaving Parris to hold our interest without much help from the writing. We were frustrated by how quickly the film dropped that resentment: it had given Monica something to feel about another person. Parris remains worth watching, but we cannot pretend she has been given a satisfying part.
Her breakthrough was Dawn Chambers in Mad Men (2012–2015), a recurring role that preceded her work in independent films. She played Coco in Dear White People (2014), then took the lead as Lysistrata in Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq (2015). By WandaVision (2021), she was moving between the programme’s decade-specific sitcom styles and its drama as Monica Rambeau. That requires comic timing as well as a convincing person beneath the changes in performance style. Her naturalism does not mean she can only play things straight.
Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) gives her a more rewarding place in an ensemble. As Ernestine Rivers, Parris contributes to the film’s warmth towards a young couple and their families, which makes the injustice feel personal. It is a good setting for her grounded acting, with supporting characters given a share of our attention. The film sometimes moves too slowly, though, and the narration labours feelings the actors have already made clear.
Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels gives its actors a different problem: keeping their characters distinct while their powers send them swapping places. Editors Evan Schiff and Catrin Hedström match the action across frames, so a punch begun in one location can finish in another. The sequence is cheerful and clear, and there is pleasure in watching the three heroines work within its rules. But the script does not give Monica’s grievance anything like that care. For Parris, start with If Beale Street Could Talk, and do not mistake Monica’s thin writing for a limit on the actor.
Biography
Teyonah Parris is an American actress. She graduated from the Juilliard School and began her professional career in 2010.
Her early prominent roles include Dawn Chambers in the series Mad Men (2012–2015) and a part in the film Dear White People (2014). She later appeared in Empire (2015), Chi-Raq (2015), If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), Candyman (2021) and They Cloned Tyrone (2023).
In 2021 she began portraying Monica Rambeau in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, first in the series WandaVision and then in the film The Marvels (2023). She has also voiced the character in What If...? (2021).
