Pride: A Seven Deadly Sins Story premieres on Lifetime Saturday, April 8 at 8/7c.
Pride comes before the fall!
In this new installment from TD Jakes, Birdie (GRAMMY-Award winner, Stephanie Mills) is the family matriarch who's built a pretty successful bake shop from scratch.
The bakery is popular but struggles in the economy as other businesses blossom around the mom and pop shop. Times have certainly changed since the launch of the bakery, and so does the need to market publicly. Birdie insists on rolling with the wave of the future by reality TV, which seems to pull the bakery back into the spotlight from its stagnant state.
Birdie depends on family to resuscitate the business that she's worked hard to keep, though Birdie knows there's a subtle riff between her son Gabe ( Thomas “Nephew Tommy” Miles) and granddaughter by eldest daughter, Ella Boudreaux (Keeya Kingand ) that look to inherite the bakery as sole heirs.
Stephanie Mills plays the fickle and naive grandmother Birdie, very well, choosing sides and ignoring the reality that comes with raising toxic humans, who've been blinded by the entitlement factors that the family business is a given. Birdie plays sides-- She's arrogant, and fixed on hiding the truth, knowing full well of what she's dealing with, but doesn't care because business first-- maintaining a facade for the public eye, is most important.
While Nephew Tommy plays the cunning and manipulative son, to the heart, which almost resonates with viewers, but not so much!
Birdie takes her concerns to her pastor Trey, (Erica Campbell) who offers counsel but not the blatant gist that Birdie needs to keep that third eye open, which beckons to the questions of the why behind that decision. Are Pastorial counselors not that invested?
The audience will need to decide.
Furthermore, Keeyas character, Ella, is fighting to prove that she's just as deserving of receiving her grandmothers love, by going along with every whim relating to the bakery, that Birdie dishes out which is a spicy recipe for disaster.
Stephanie Mills as leading actress is a huge delight considering Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram killed the woman off in 2022. Leave it to satire of social media-- The good news is that while Mills has stunned fans almost five decades as a soulful songstress, she's equally captivating as actress, that she twiddles the nerves just a bit through her character who's like many of us when dealing with matters of the heart.... plain flat out, dumb.
Nephew Tommy, his character Gabe, is the neegrow, that most family members despise. Hate to see him coming, but love to see him go... good on the outside, but rotten on the inside. He executed his scenes quite elaborately.
As for Keeya, carrying the weight of her character Ella, simply wanting to belong-- she does just about any and everything to win her grandmother's affection though she starts out rather rogue, which lends answers to questions about her character and integrity in the long haul.
You learn from these three, that change is a devout force that no one can reckon with. It happens-- change, at the blink of an eye whether it's intentional or not
Pride is a great movie pointing harshly at many lessons including three of the sins all dolled into one feature, pride, envy and greed.
Following the immensely popular Seven Deadly Sins movies—Lust, Envy, Wrath and Greed—Lifetime continues the anthology with a new sin and new movie, Pride: A Seven Deadly Sins Story. Executive produced by T.D. Jakes, Derrick Williams and Shaun Robinson, and inspired by actual events, the movie centers on the story of a famous bakery owner and reality TV star Birdie Moore (GRAMMY-Award winner, Stephanie Mills) whose past secrets threaten the enormous success she has achieved. Joining Mills are co-stars Thomas “Nephew Tommy” Miles as Birdie’s son, Gabe Moore; Keeya King as her granddaughter, Ella Boudreaux; and Grammy-Award winner Erica Campbell as Pastor Trey. Pride: A Seven Deadly Sins Story premieres on Saturday, April 8 at 8/7c.
The prior 7 Deadly Sins Lifetime original movies - Lust, Envy, Wrath and Greed – attracted close to 7 million total viewers in 2022.
Pride: A Seven Deadly Sins Story tells the story of reality TV star Birdie Moore (Stephanie Mills), whose carefully constructed world starts to crumble — like the baked goods that catapulted her to fame — when her family secrets are brought to light. To salvage her legacy, Birdie must let go of the pride that estranged her from her daughter. Birdie’s pride also prevents her from seeing that her son Gabe Moore (Thomas Miles) is actually a thieving opportunist and that her granddaughter Ella Boudreaux (Keeya King) is just a lost twenty-something trying to build up her life after some missteps. While pride helped drive Birdie’s success, it also made her blind to what was happening around her. Will Birdie finally be able to see and admit the truth, or face the consequences of her pride?
Pride: A Seven Deadly Sins Story is produced by Neshama Entertainment, T.D. Jakes Enterprises, DNA Media Group and RobinHood Productions in association with MarVista Entertainment. T.D. Jakes, Derrick Williams, and Shaun Robinson serve as executive producers along with Larry Grimaldi, Hannah Pillemer and Fernando Szew for MarVista Entertainment, and Arnie Zipursky and Suzanne Berger for Neshama. Pride is directed by Troy Scott from a script written by Felicia Brooker. Award-winning composer and music director, Ray Chew, is the movie's composer.
In addition to Stephanie Mills, Thomas Miles, Keeya King, and Erica Campbell, the movie also stars Lucia Walters (Virgin River) as Shanice; and Jaime M. Callica (Ruthless) as Khalil.
The Seven Deadly Sins movie anthology is inspired by novels from author Victoria Christopher Murray, who is a consulting producer on Pride.