This weekend marksthe arrival of Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead in theaters!
Source: Courtesy / BET+
Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead follows the story of seventeen-year-old Tanya Crandell (Simone Joy Jones) who can’t wait to spend the summer living it up with her friends in Spain before heading to Howard University in the fall. But when her mom (Ms. Pat) decides to head to a much-needed wellness retreat in Thailand, Tanya is forced to stay home with her three siblings instead.
Source: Courtesy / BET+
Following the unexpected death of their elderly babysitter (June Squibb), Tanya gets a job working for the confident and ambitious Rose (Nicole Richie). Juggling work, family, and a complicated romance, Tanya faces the responsibility of adulthood at the cost of her summer of freedom.
Check out the trailer below:
For our Gen X and millennial readers, you likely still remember the original Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead from the 90’s. And we all know remakes can be tricky! BOSSIP’s Sr. Content Director Janeé Bolden spoke with Nicole Richie and Simone Joy Jones about remaking a classic.
“I am a die hard of the original and just immediately when the opportunity came up to play Rose I couldn’t believe it,” Richie told BOSSIP about the risky decision to sign on for the reboot. “And then I, of course, asked the same question to myself that I think everyone asks — of like, what does that even look like? I jumped on a Zoom with [director] Wade [Allain-Marcus] and you know Wade is not only a director but he’s an actor, he is a real artist and he had just such a clear vision of what he wanted to do and what he planned on doing with it. He had everything from color palettes to mood boards to references and I really just felt like I could easily immerse myself in the world that he was going to dive into. I trust him and felt safe with him and was just excited to do it.”
“All of that and Chuck [Hayward] with the script,” Simone Joy Jones added. “I sat down with the script and I remember just laughing out loud when I was reading it and I was like, ‘Oh I can’t wait!’”
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Jones and Richie make for incredible scene partners in the film, so we were curious to ask about how they built their bond behind the scenes.
“OK well first of all Simone is a star,” Richie told BOSSIP. “She’s just incredible and I love doing scenes with her. I also loved having lunch together every day and we you know we share a love of memes and weird videos, which is not always the case, like you don’t always have the same taste in that content and we did.”
“We just had an the absolute best time and obviously I was one of the older people on set, but once all the kids were there — so were you!” Richie laughed, pointing at Jones. “We were like, ‘Wow they have so much energy!’
“Oh my God the backflipping, doing tiktoks,” Jones interjected. “I was like ‘Don’t you need a water?’ I was like, ‘I’ll catch you on the inside I’m so tired.”
“Donielle [T. Hansley Jr.] one night, we wrapped at 10:00 PM and he’s like, ‘What are we doing after?’ I was like, ‘After? I have to be here tomorrow,’” Richie finished. “So we share that, which was very it was really fun and sweet to watch and just be a part of.”
“She’s just so amazing and welcoming,” Jones added. “You never know what it’s going to be like with just new actors or people in general so once she just was just so warm and such a sun I was like, ‘I love it!’ It was a vibe.”
Source: Courtesy / BET+
Richie and Jones closed out the interview by reminiscing about what they were like as 17-year-olds.
“Tattoos, my tongue ring, I mean lots of things,” Richie told BOSSIP when asked what things she didn’t want her mom to be told she’d done. “I got caught for all of them because I have no chill. Tanya is much smoother with everything that she gets away with or doesn’t doesn’t get away with, but the list really goes on and on.”
“I would say for me I kind of did everything I was told,” Jones admitted. “Boring. Eventually it kind of broke after 17.”
What kind of secrets did you keep from your mom when you were 17?
Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead arrives in theaters Friday April 12.