Janet Jackson’s ‘Good Times’ Mom Chip Fields Talks Teaching Her How To ‘Cry On Cue’

Janet Jackson’s ‘Good Times’ Mom Chip Fields Talks Teaching Her How To ‘Cry On Cue’

Before she was taking over stages and the big screen, Janet Jackson starred in the iconic series “Good Times.”

During a recent Instagram live stream video, American actress Kim Fields’s mother, Chip Fields, let everyone know what it was like working with Janet Jackson on the hit 70s series.

Chip Fields, who played the abusive mother of a young Janet Jackson on the show, shared with her daughter Kim Fields what it took to help the entertainment icon fully tap into her role as a child. 

“That weekend we had rewrites and stuff and Janet came home with me. And that’s how you and her became like sisters. And we worked on it and Janet sat down and I said ‘Okay, I know you don’t like to cry. I know it’s a different kind of genre for you, it’s not in the music industry. But we got to get to the point that when you come from that closet behind me, you gotta have something on your face and you got to bring it.’ And she’d get tickled because it was such an unnatural thing to just cry on cue.” 

She continued: 

“And so I said okay well here’s what I’m going to tell you, I want you to go into the closet – in our house, we’re rehearsing – and I don’t want you to come out of the closet until you have thought about something that will bring you to that kind of tear. If you can’t believe it right now then fine – that’s that memory thing. So she goes in the closet and she came out – and I’m turned this way. When she came out that closet and said ‘mama I’m sorry!’ Oh my gosh! Then she made me act.” 

Good Times was an American fictional sitcom that followed an African American family as they lived their lives and worked to move out of the projects. The series showcased the first African American two-parent household on American television.  

What are your thoughts on what Chip Fields said? Let us know in the comments.

Authored by: Twila-Amoure McDaniel