‘The Chi’ Stars Lynn Whitfield, Yolonda Ross Open Up About Their Dramatic Season 7 Exits

‘The Chi’ Stars Lynn Whitfield, Yolonda Ross Open Up About Their Dramatic Season 7 Exits

Nobody’s safe on The Chi. And season seven was yet another reminder that anything can happen at any time on the long-running series about life on the South Side of Chicago that Lena Waithe created as a love letter to her hometown.

One of season seven’s most surprising deaths got an early reveal back in episode seven when Jada (Yolonda Ross) — a fan favorite since the very first episode aired on Showtime back in January 2018 — found out that her victory over cancer back in season four was not on repeat for season seven.

As unexpected and sad as Jada’s pending death initially was, it wasn’t a surprise in the finale. Telling her husband Darnell (Rolando Boyce), son Emmett (Jacob Latimore), along with others, was incorporated into her season seven storyline. Darnell, on the suggestion of a grief counselor, gave Jada a living funeral so she could receive her flowers while she was still living. And though her final death was not a surprise, it was still an emotional kicker.

Alicia Daniels Lafayette’s (Lynn Whitfield) murder, however, or at least her murderer, was a shock to most. Her quest to find out who really killed her son Rob (one-time NBA player Iman Shumpert) had not gone well. On the word of silent kingpin Nuck (Cortez Smith), whom she knows killed Douda (Curtiss Cook) — who she also wanted dead for killing her brother Quentin “Q” Dickinson (Steven Williams) — she killed Zay (Aaron Guy), Nuck’s cousin who worked for him without realizing it was Nuck who actually killed Rob.

Before Alicia’s murder, she crossed paths with Bakari (Ahmad Nicholas Ferguson) whom she gave a scholarship to college to give him a second chance. Not knowing Bakari’s loyalty to Nuck, she took his bait intimating that Reg (Barton Fitzpatrick) — middle brother of Victor aka Trig (Luke James), the oldest, and Jake (Michael Epps), the youngest — who, despite being presumed dead after an ambush in season two, showed up alive in season seven, really killed her son.

The chickens have a strange way of coming home to roost on The Chi. So it wasn’t her pursuit of Reg, which she ended up involving the law, namely Detective Toussaint (Crystal Anne Dickinson), who could get her own son out of prison if she brought him down, that led to her death. Instead, amid Alicia dealing with her house being robbed and making plans to see her newborn grandson and his mother Tiff (Hannaha Hall), Douda’s wife Roselyn (former Real Housewives of Atlanta star Kandi Burruss) showed up to avenge Douda’s death — on the word of Nuck! Now going into The Chi’s groundbreaking season eight on Paramount+ with Showtime, Shaad and Victor are being arrested for Alicia’s murder.

Whitfield, who won her eight NAACP Image award for her portrayal of Alicia earlier this year, tells The Hollywood Reporter she didn’t learn of Alicia’s death until “somewhere mid-season, maybe the fifth episode or so.”

Playing a character who dies violently, she believes, hadn’t happened to her since she was Rae in the 1985 film Silverado. “It was really an interesting journey for me,” she says, “because so often I am playing that strong character that finds a way [and] that learns a lesson. And I honestly felt there was a possibility for [Alicia] to learn something, particularly with her grandson coming.”

Knowing who the killer would be came down to the wire. “We didn’t know until the last episode who was going to do it. I would like to have been in the writers room [as] they were deciding.”

Alicia’s relationship with the younger Shaad (played by Jason Weaver) was an entertaining topic during their panel discussion that also included Luke James at the Hollywood House at this year’s Essence Festival of Culture. While Weaver spoke of their romantic interaction, referencing his admiration for her since her co-starring role with Martin Lawrence in the 1996 film A Thin Line Between Love & Hate and gushed over all he learned from working with the legendary actress, Whitfield went straight for the meat.

“It was so funny because, at the end of season six … I don’t know if you all saw it, but we have this really impassioned kind of (pause) kiss,” she shared. “Jason was being so polite because it appears that Alicia really likes being choked off a little bit so Jason, you, wouldn’t do it. He was like ‘you okay?’”

Weaver finished by telling the crowd that Whitfield said, “‘Fuck the bullshit, excuse my language, you were like ‘choke me and let’s do this scene.’”

“But it just popped off after that,” Whitfield added. “Social media went crazy,” with Weaver chiming in “And rightfully so; that was a hot scene. We did that!”

“It was hot. Women of all ages enjoy passionate sex, don’t we?” she asked the crowd of mostly women to thunderous applause.

Later with The Hollywood Reporter, the Louisiana native elaborated on Alicia’s attraction to Shaad. “[With] a take-care-of-business person, woman, Black woman, often they just become an island because they’re taking care of everybody else. They’re out there, hustling, doing the shake shift to keep everything going. But in Shaad, she found solace. … even though he had come out of prison and all of that, she found solace in his simplicity of ‘I can help you. … One of my favorite scenes from last season was like a Saturday morning when they’re just at home, business is good and it’s just nice.”

Joining The Chi, which was initially only supposed to be three episodes and not two seasons, says Whitfield, also let her know how much her fans, many of whom watched her faithfully as Lady Mae, the first lady of a megachurch, a huge departure from Alicia, on the OWN series Greenleaf, which Oprah Winfrey produced, adored her.

“So many of my fans who hadn’t been watching this show started watching the show,” she says. “It’s just so wonderful to have that validation that there are people out there who’ve watched through the years, who will always tune in to see what’s going on when they know I’m there.”

Ross, a day-one member of The Chi, experienced a different gift than Whitfield. “I have face and name recognition,” the Omaha, Nebraska native tells The Hollywood Reporter. “People would recognize me from things but then didn’t know what my name was because I was usually in independent films or recurring on somebody else’s show. And from how they’ve shown [up] online, they’ve grown to really love Jada, which I so appreciate. And they know my name.”

Jada, a caregiver, raised her son Emmett alone, doing the best she could. In the present-day The Chi, Emmett has traveled quite a bit from the irresponsible boy who fathered multiple kids by different women and used his money to buy sneakers instead of caring for them. Currently he owns Smokey’s BBQ, a popular casual dining spot, and shares a home and is expecting a child with Kiesha as they co-parent his other kids and Kiesha’s son. It’s a far cry from when Jada met Kiesha under Emmett’s bed trying to hide instead of being busted for having sex and offered her breakfast. That moment was recreated this season with Kiesha emulating Jada with Emmett’s half-brother Damien (Brett Gray) and Zuri (Karrueche Tran).

Ross’s initial attraction to playing Jada is profound and real. “She’s a Black woman that holds it down,” says Ross. “We all have that aunt, that sister, that mother, that woman you work with, that woman you see at the store every week when you go. You don’t really know her, but something about her seems really solid. And you know if you need something, she’ll probably be able to handle it. You know, she’s that woman that we all know, yet a lot of times we don’t get to know. What I thought was very interesting about this show was being able to get in deep with somebody, and get all into their personal life, get into their psyche, and get to understand a Jada and where she’s coming from, and what she might go through that you might never, ever know because you don’t get to know that side of her.”

That other side for Jada, like Alicia, included a relationship with a younger man, but Ross’ reflections on Jada and Suede (Bernard Gilbert) are much different than Alicia and Shaad. “I was not expecting that at all. The whole Suede thing was funny and then it’s Emmett’s friend, kind of touchy and weird, but it was a lot of fun, and Bernard was great to work with, and some of the scenes with the three of us, it’s just funny to watch Emmett get all whatever about this young dude sleeping with his mom,” she smiles.

Jada did get the man she wanted in Darnell though. “It was a really beautiful moment,” she says. “And you want that for people. I know way too many single women out here, like, beautiful, got jobs, everything, and it’s just like a lot of people are alone. So it’s very interesting. And it was really nice that he got his stuff together so that they could get back together. And it’s also nice for Emmett to see his parents [together when] he’s been the man in her life all this time, and now the man who produced him is actually stepping up to make his mother happy. And both of them are together in happiness.”

When Jada had breast cancer back in season four, she and Darnell were not married and happy, but Ross counts that character arc and challenge as her most rewarding as an actor. “I feel it’s very important to represent us honestly. Knowing I had lost family members and friends to cancer, I wanted to make sure I showed us humanely and fully. I had actually started working with cancer organizations in Chicago because of that.”

“The cutting of my hair was the hardest for me. And that might seem like a simple thing, because it wasn’t about lines. In that moment, you’re thinking about Jada’s mortality, thinking about your own mortality, the realness of what’s happening in that moment,” she says.

“I didn’t want to go into that and just be an actor, put on a scarf and say ‘Oh, I got cancer.’ The woman who’s head of our hair department lost two sisters to breast cancer. We talked about a wig, and then one day I was just like ‘You know what? I’ll just cut it off.’ … It was right after covid, so we were in a weird lockdown and isolation. There’s a lot happening in the world that is affecting you, and then this storyline is affecting you. And, yeah, it was heavy. It’s not my favorite year of the show, but it was my favorite year as far as challenging me as an actor.”

Jada’s living funeral was a surreal moment for Ross with her make-believe and real emotions colliding, especially with Lattimore, whom she’s grown very close to over their seven-season ride. “It’s a lot, walking into a room, and I did walk in last, that is set up with pictures of you and your play family, but we really are like a family and friends, and seeing people you hadn’t seen in a while. Suede showed up. All these things [are] quite emotional,” she explains.

“When your son walks up there and he’s having a hard time already doing this, it was a lot. I almost didn’t really want to watch him do it, because I could see him struggling. You know, you see him struggling. As an actor, you step off to the side a lot of times, away from people, so that you can hold all that in you. You don’t have somebody talking to you [when] you’re trying to concentrate on an emotion. I know Jacob was doing that, and then he got up there and he couldn’t even get through the lines that he was supposed to be reading. So it was a lot to see, and he made me break down.”

The secret to The Chi’s long-running success is no mystery to Ross. “It’s straight up the viewers. Their love for the show, the characters, they have invested in us, and I think it’s amazing. We’re so fortunate,” she says. “Going into an eighth season is ‘oh, wow.’ You know and trust it’s not going to last forever. You have got to look at the reality of how TV works. It’s not going to be here forever, but it’s amazing the run that we’ve had, and that is because of the viewers, period.”

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All seven seasons of The Chi are streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime.