When Tyler Perry looked across the room and told Porscha Coleman she was going to be someone else, she did not argue. The actress, host, and entertainer had walked in prepared for one role and walked out with another. That pivot gave her one of the most talked about characters on streaming right now.
Handpicked for the role
Coleman did not land Naomi the conventional way. Perry saw her during casting and redirected her on the spot. “Tyler hand selected me for this role,” she said. “I was going to be a different character on the show and I got the callback and then he saw me in the room and was like, no, you need to be somebody else.”
That somebody else was Naomi, a wealthy and unapologetic woman determined to reclaim her ex-husband at any cost. Coleman had just enough information to get started. “All I know is that she’s rich, has a lot of money and she’s trying to get back to her ex-husband,” she recalled. “Well, we’ll go from there.”
The moment Perry called her by her real name on set confirmed what the casting decision had already suggested. “It’s kind of dope that he’ll walk by and say, oh, there goes Porscha,” she said. “It feels really good to know that the guy who created, wrote, directed and did all of this for the show is a fan of my work.”
The Naomi alter ego
For all the chaos Naomi brings to Divorced Sistas, Coleman is quick to draw the line between herself and the character. “I don’t have an ex-husband. I don’t have a kid and I don’t have a drinking problem,” she said. “So those three things alone are not me at all.”
Still, she acknowledges the overlap. She describes herself as direct and emotionally expressive, traits that surface in the role. “A lot of the other stuff where it’s like I’m a straight shooter or keeping it real with my friends, that’s me,” she said.
Where Naomi goes further, Coleman sees it as freedom. “The other part to me is just my alter ego where I’m like, okay, inhibitions to the side. And now let’s just have fun and play this crazy girl that I just love to portray.”
The result is a character that refuses to be ignored. “I think either people will say you either love her or you hate her. But you’re going to be like, she’s a real one. You have to feel something for her.”
Why Divorced Sistas keeps people watching
Coleman believes the show’s pull comes down to recognition. Viewers see themselves, their friends, and their family in the five women at its center. “There is somebody in one of these characters that you can look at and say, that’s my home girl, that’s my auntie, that’s my cousin,” she said. “It’s just relatable. And that’s why it’s working.”
She also credits the element of surprise. “I think people love it because they weren’t expecting the show that they’re watching,” she said. Audiences who assumed Divorced Sistas would mirror familiar BET titles quickly discovered something different. “It’s not a spinoff. It’s just an extension of the universe of what Tyler Perry likes to do.”
What’s next for Porscha Coleman
With the Divorced Sistas finale on the way, Coleman is already moving forward. Before the current season, she appeared on Power Book IV, Season 3, playing a character named Jade alongside Tommy Egan. She also has two self-tapes in progress and films on the horizon, including BET Plus movies shot in upstate New York and Kentucky.