Meagan Good and DeVon Franklin announce their divorce in the most loving way
Meagan Good and DeVon Franklin, who met while working on the 2011 comedy “Jumping the Broom,” are divorcing after nine years of marriage.
A new statement from actor-producer Good, 40, and producer-preacher-author preacher Franklin, 43, suggests the Hollywood couple are still emotionally close to each other.
“After much prayer and consideration, we have decided to go into our futures separately but forever connected,” they said in a joint statement posted to both their Instagram accounts late Tuesday. “We celebrate almost a decade of marriage together and a love that is eternal. There’s no one at fault, we believe this is the next best chapter in the evolution of our love.
“We are incredibly grateful for the life-changing years we’ve spent together as husband and wife,” they continued. “We are also extremely thankful to God for the testimony being created inside us both and for blessing our lives with each other.”
‘Harlem,’ from ‘Girls Trip’ screenwriter Tracy Oliver, adds new layers to the trope of four young, single women navigating life and love in New York.
Franklin, 43, and Good, 40, got engaged in May 2012 and married that June. They shared details of their romance — including waiting until marriage to have sex — in their 2015 book, “The Wait: A Powerful Practice for Finding the Love of Your Life and the Life You Love.” The couple believed saving sex for marriage was a key to their relationship success.
Good, who stars in the new Amazon comedy series “Harlem,” drew on her relationship for her role as a Black executive producer to Will Ferrell’s clueless Ron Burgundy in “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.”
She told the Los Angeles Times in 2013 that when her character, Linda, barked and meowed as she sexually harassed Ron, “I make that sound around my husband, in the living room when he’s trying to watch his programs.”
Good jumped head-first into improv to play a cable news executive and comic foil to Will Ferrell’s bigoted Ron Burgundy in ‘The Legend Continues.’ It was a role she loved playing.
She also spoke up in 2014 when nudes of her and a number of other actresses were leaked in a massive phishing breach that ended with five men going to prison. At the time, Good said on Instagram that she was “definitely in shock” and “saddened” by the breach of privacy and that “everyone who’s reposting the leaked nudes? You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“We all know these pictures were for my husband,” said Good, who made her feature directorial debut with “If Not Now, When?,” which premiered in January.
Meanwhile, Franklin and other Black filmmakers discussed systemic racism in Hollywood for an L.A. Times story surveying the industry amid the protests in the summer of 2020. Franklin noted a “dehumanization” of Black people in entertainment.
The Times interviewed nearly two dozen Black entertainment industry voices, spanning directors, producers, writers, designers, agents and executives. They discussed racism in Hollywood, what needs to change and their frustration with years of talk and little action by powerful companies.
“That dehumanization is by no means completely at the doorstep of Hollywood,” said Franklin, the bestselling author of “Produced by Faith.” “However, when you see the persistent images that Hollywood portrays of Black men and women in demeaning positions, being violent and so forth, it contributes to the dehumanization.”
He also dismissed the idea of diversity initiatives helping change those images.
“No studio would outsource their film slate to human resources,” Franklin said. “So the idea that most diversity initiatives are run through human resource departments is one of the reasons why they don’t work.”
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