Hannaha Hall is back for another season of The Chi. Season 7 premiered Friday, capturing her character, Tiffany, learning her boyfriend, Rob (Iman Shumpert), had been shot to death. Knowing the grief Tiff would go through in this new season, she tells ABC Audio she had to unplug from the rest of the cast while on set in order to prepare for her scenes.
“I know with Tiff and her emotional scenes this season, I had to kind of isolate myself. I’m always cracking jokes. I’m always talking stuff to my co-stars in a good way, but I had to kind of isolate just so I can make sure I’m grounded in this performance or in this feeling, this moment,” she says.
Having never experienced grief in that capacity, Hannaha says she tapped into multiple experiences as she prepared for the role.
“I was like, ‘You know what? Let think about this, let me think about this’ … and even in those moments, you don’t know how that feels unless you genuinely experienced it,” she says. Still, she tried “to understand and create that hypothetical of what it would look like, what it would feel like, also thinking about the words and the dialogue” to make sure she understood where they were in the story.
Hannaha said she also listened to music as she put herself in Tiff’s shoes and received some help from co-star Lynn Whitfield, who helped her tap into the character.
Jason Weaver, who plays Rashaad on the show, says the hard work paid off, as Hannaha “really did do some amazing work. He says, “Because she took that time as an actor to really prepare herself … the audience is gonna love her performance this season.”
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