‘The most subversive thing you can do is read': 2025's best graduation speeches

America's higher education may be under attack from the federal government – but students from the class of 2025 still have to graduate. And so commencement season, somehow, occurred, with the world's best and brightest politicians, entertainers and athletes, plus a frog, presenting their hard-earned wisdom. From Percival Everett to Simone Biles to President Trump himself, here are 10 lessons we've learned from the year's graduation speeches.
Elizabeth Banks advised her fellow University of Pennsylvania grads not to put too much stock in pie metaphors.
The biggest division in this country, the comedy actor and director said, was economic, with vast wealth concentrated in the hands of a small number of people. But they don't have a monopoly on the future. 'I can understand why you believe that life is a zero-sum game,' Banks said. 'If one person takes a bigger slice, everyone else has to take a smaller slice and the total size of the pie remains the same. And that is true with actual pie. But not with life. Not with opportunity.
'You're really only ever competing with yourself, with the limitations you're willing to accept, with the smallness of someone else's idea of what you're capable of. So stop competing and start beating the pie lie.'
Unfortunately, one thing could stand in the way. 'The biggest derailment to the future you want to build is irresponsible ejaculation,' Banks warned. 'I know all the doctors on this stage with me agree that that is the cause of all unwanted pregnancy.' Everyone deserves to 'be able to determine whether, when and with whom you become a parent'. So, she said: 'Wrap it up. Keep abortion legal.'
Levar Burton, the actor and TV host who inspired several generations of kids to read, brought his message to Howard University, where the crowd still knew the words to the Reading Rainbow theme song.
At a dark time for America, he offered some hope. 'At every level, in every era as slaves and then as the descendants of slaves, we have challenged this nation to live up to the promise of its founding proposition that all men are created equal,' he said. 'In 2025, America is still addicted to its racism,' like 'an alcoholic who has yet to hit rock bottom'. Still, 'only in America could a descendant of slaves, for whom simply knowing how to read was once punishable by death, grow up and become a celebrated champion for literacy and the written word. This, too, is America. This is still a land of great promise and opportunity yet untold.'
Burton said he only wished the country could live up to its original promise. 'To do that, she must shun the scourge of racist thinking and behaving and policymaking that holds this nation back.
'There's gonna be another day. You hear me? There's gonna be another day,' he told the crowd, referencing an ad-libbed line from the show Roots that lifted him to stardom. 'And even though the future may look uncertain, graduates … That day has arrived. This moment is yours to shape.'
Speaking at Yale University, Jacinda Ardern noted the unexpected benefits of impostor syndrome and sensitivity. 'Self-doubt brings with it humility,' the former prime minister of New Zealand said. 'It drives you to seek information, to listen to experts who can teach you and advisers who can guide you.' And sensitivity – 'the thing that moves you to tears when you see the pain of others' – can 'be what drives you to action,' she added.
'In fact,' she said, 'all those traits that you might have believed your whole life were weaknesses – questioning yourself, the doubt that brings humility, or sensitivity that comes with empathy – may just be what the world needs more of.'
At Bates College in Maine, the scholar and psychologist Angela Duckworth asked graduates and faculty to perform an excruciating experiment: handing their phones to the people next to them for a quarter of an hour.
Related: 'Free Mahmoud': Columbia students boo acting president at graduation as Khalil is still detained
'I want to talk about something that might seem trivial, but in fact has profound implications for your future success and happiness, something as consequential as your major or where you land your first job, and that's where you choose to keep your phone,' Duckworth said. Her research on goals and self-control had yielded a surprising conclusion, she said: 'Willpower is overrated. In study after study, psychologists like me have found that achieving what you want out of life has very little to do with forcing yourself to act in one way or another.'
Instead, she said, successful people 'deliberately design their situations in ways that make wise choices easier' – a practice called 'situation modification'. Teenagers are spending eight hours a day looking at screens, she said. 'If you don't like how your phone grabs your attention, directs your thoughts, triggers your desires, then push it away. On the other hand, if you do want something to take up more of your conscious awareness, art, poetry, a really good novel, keep it as close as possible.'
That goes for friends, too: 'Phones can connect us to people who are far away, but they can also separate us from the people right in front of us.'
Percival Everett, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James, gave a brief but stark call to action at Wesleyan University, describing this year's graduates as perhaps 'the last line of defense of and for American intellectual life'.
Fascists, he said, burn books because 'they are afraid of thought'. Students, however, had learned to read – and not just books. 'You have learned to read the world, people, actions, conspiracies. You have learned to think for yourselves.' Everett called reading 'the most subversive thing you can do. When you read, no one knows what's going into you, even if they are reading over your shoulder, and they are.'
His advice for graduates: 'I ask nothing more from you than to do what you have been doing. Go out into the fray and keep reading.'
At his alma mater, the University of Southern California – known for producing Hollywood luminaries – the film-maker Jon M Chu emphasized the importance of a good story, especially at a time when it can feel like the world is falling apart.
Right now, he said, familiar stories were disintegrating, and 'fear, blame, and division dominate our airwaves.' But instead of despairing, he added, this was 'a moment of profound opportunity. Because when the old stories fall apart, it means it's time to write a new one.'
He continued: 'Whoever tells the best story holds the power. Your ability to understand, interpret, and ultimately shape stories is critically important no matter what you want to do.' Machines may be able to assess data and 'even create art, but they cannot authentically feel or intuitively connect. In whatever field you are in, your power to convey information in ways that emotionally connect will be more valuable than we even currently acknowledge.'
Simone Biles is, of course, a top contender for the Greatest of All Time – but she told graduates at Washington University of St Louis that 'being the Goat was never the goal.' Instead, 'my goal was to be the greatest Simone Biles of all time.' Biles urged listeners to do the same: be the 'greatest you of all time' – and in the process, embrace failure.
'When you're reaching for things, you're going to fall short, and yes, sometimes you're going to fail,' she said. 'When – not if, but when – this happens to you, just learn from it, and move on to Plan B. If plan B doesn't work out, then make a Plan C, and then guess what – there's the rest of the alphabet. The key to success is the willingness to always find a way.'
Graduates of the US Military Academy at West Point were treated to inspirational remarks by their commander-in-chief. Among other insights into the human condition, Donald Trump delved into questions of terminology, noting that the preferred term for people on the left is 'progressive' rather than 'liberal', and 'that's why I call them liberal'.
He also questioned whether it was acceptable to say 'trophy wife', ultimately deciding that it was. Still, he cautioned against obtaining one. 'That doesn't work out too well, I must tell you,' he said as he regaled the newly minted officers with the life stories of the professional golfer Gary Player and real estate developer William Levitt. 'A lot of trophy wives – doesn't work out, but it made him happy for a little while at least. But he found a new wife. He sold his little boat and he got a big yacht,' Trump said of the latter. The president also pointed out that he won last year's election.
At the University of Maryland – the alma mater of his creator, Jim Henson – Dr Kermit the Frog offered a sunny vision in challenging times. Life, he said, was about 'finding your people, taking the leap, and making connections'.
'Rather than jumping over someone to get what you want, consider reaching out your hand and taking the leap side by side. Because life is better when we leap together,' the frog advised. But, he warned biology majors: 'You're not going to get me to step foot inside your lab.'
The physician and author Abraham Verghese spoke at Harvard University as it defends itself from the Trump administration's attempted crackdown on academia. Outrage over the government's actions, he said, should lead to new appreciation – 'appreciation for the rule of law and due process, which till now we took for granted', he said, as well as 'appreciation of actions that demonstrate thoughtfulness, decency, generosity, kindness, humility and service to community'.
Verghese reflected on how, during the Aids epidemic, many young people returned to their home towns to spend their last days. 'Given the prevailing sentiments against gay people in small towns in the rural south, I found myself pleasantly surprised to find my patients were so well received by their families. They were cared for lovingly to the end. You see, love trumps all bigotry. Love trumps ideology.'

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11 hours ago

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Harvard hired a researcher to uncover its ties to slavery. He says the results cost him his job: ‘We found too many slaves'

Jordan Lloyd had been praying for something big to happen. The 35-year-old screenwriter was quarantining in her apartment in North Hollywood in June 2020. Without any work projects to fill her days, she picked up the novel Roots, by Alex Haley, to reread. The novel tells the story of Kunta Kinte, Haley's ancestor, who is captured and sold into slavery in the Gambia and then brought to Virginia, where he is forced to labor on a plantation. It was adapted into an Emmy-award winning television series in the 1970s, and while reading it again, Lloyd thought to herself, 'Wouldn't it be nice if they could make another Roots?' A few days later, out of the blue, she received an email from an undergraduate student at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The email was short. The woman introduced herself as Carissa Chen, a junior at the college studying history. She was working on an independent research project to find descendants of enslaved people connected to the university. By using historical records and modern genealogy tools, she had found Lloyd. Related: Harriet Tubman's church in Canada was a crucial force in the abolitionist movement. It's still standing today 'I have reason to believe through archival research that you could be the descendant of Tony and Cuba Vassall, two slaves taken from Antigua by a founding member connected to Harvard University,' the email read. 'Are you available anytime for a call?' The note linked to a website containing a family tree that Chen had created, tracing the lineage of people enslaved by Isaac Royall Jr, an Antiguan planter and businessman whose endowment would eventually create Harvard Law School. Chen hadn't expected to find any living descendants, she told the Guardian, but through dogged research, she managed to uncover 50 names and found Lloyd through an old website she had made when she had first moved to Los Angeles. 'It all felt too specific to be a scam,' Lloyd recounted, so she agreed to a call that would eventually blow open everything she thought she knew about her family history, linking her with one of the nation's most prestigious institutions and launching a phase in her life that would be colored with equal parts joy and pain. Though it contradicts a common perception of colonial New England, enslaved people were brought to work in northern cities in North America as well. In her book New England Bound, the historian Wendy Warren records the remarks of one European traveler who noted in 1687 that 'there is not a house in Boston, however small may be its means, that has not one or two [enslaved people]'. As the country's oldest and wealthiest university, Harvard's history is inextricable from the history of transatlantic slavery. The enslaved labored in campus buildings, university presidents and professors owned people forced into bondage, and the school's wealth grew through a circle of donors intimately connected to the plantation system in the Caribbean, the American south and the trafficking of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. Harvard began, informally, to research its relationship to slavery as early as 2007, when the history professor Sven Beckert started leading undergraduate research seminars such as the one Chen took. In 2016, then Harvard president Drew Faust acknowledged the university was 'directly complicit' in slavery and, in 2022, the university released an official report, Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery, which detailed its history over more than a hundred pages. Harvard is not the only academic institution with this burden. Currently more than 100 universities across the world are investigating their ties to slavery, the vast majority of which are in the US. A small subset of the universities researching their ties to slavery – approximately five – have committed to conducting genealogical research and identifying living descendants. Religious denominations such as the Episcopal church and the Evangelical Lutheran church and more than a dozen cities and four states have also begun researching their legacies of slavery. The California state reparations taskforce published a 1,000-page report two years ago, and state legislators have been developing – and passing – reparations-related initiatives. The Guardian, founded in 1821 in Manchester, England, began its own process in 2020, when its sole owner, the Scott Trust, commissioned independent academic researchers to uncover its links to transatlantic slavery. It revealed that the newspaper's founder, John Edward Taylor, and nine out of 11 of his financial backers had direct ties, mainly through Manchester's cotton industry. In 2023, the Scott Trust apologized for its role in transatlantic slavery and committed to a 10-year restorative justice program, with millions earmarked for descendant communities. That year, the Guardian also launched an ongoing series called Cotton Capital, which explores the legacies of slavery globally. The 2022 Harvard report included a list of recommendations by the presidential committee: develop educational partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities, create a public memorial, and – perhaps most contentiously – identify living descendants of people enslaved by university staff, leaders and faculty. The announcement was accompanied by a $100m endowment for 'implementation'. The person the university tapped to lead the descendant research is a man named Richard Cellini, who has a kind of mythological status in the world of institutional accountability and slavery research. By his own admission, his skill lies primarily in selecting talented researchers, and 'keeping them happy'. The university, it seemed, was fully committed to beginning a process of discovery and atonement, putting resources and brainpower behind a project that could set the tone for institutions around the country, and the world. If successful, Harvard could demonstrate that truth-telling and reconciliation are possible on a large scale, that an institutional culture around silence and historical revisionism can be overturned, and that light can shine into even the deepest cracks. But that would ultimately not be the case. Not yet, at least. When I visited Cellini in the archives of the Harvard Business School in mid-February, he was bent over a 19th-century ledger book, trained on a set of records with a magnifying glass. He is a trained attorney and tech entrepreneur, and though jovial and quick to joke, he becomes stoic when speaking about his research. In 2015, he started an independent project at Georgetown University in Washington DC to locate the descendants of 272 enslaved people sold by Jesuit leaders in the mid-1800s to raise money for the university. Cellini said he was driven by a sense of moral outrage upon learning about the sale, as well as a curiosity to see what he could find. Along with 10 other researchers, they would eventually locate more than 10,000 direct descendants. Cellini's effort, called the Georgetown Memory Project, remains independent although the university has given preferential consideration during the admissions process to descendants and created a 'reconciliation fund' for their benefit. In the winter of 2022, before the Harvard report was made public, Cellini said he was approached by the former president of the school, Larry Bacow, and a dean, Tomiko Brown-Nagin, who asked him if he could do the same thing for Harvard. When he started the research, Harvard had already identified the names of 70 people that had been enslaved with ties to the university. Over the course of the past three years, working alongside American Ancestors, the country's pre-eminent genealogical institute, Cellini and his researchers have identified more than 900 people that had been enslaved by university affiliates (faculty, staff and people in leadership positions) and nearly 500 of their direct living descendants. It wasn't long after the work began to pick up steam that Cellini started running into trouble. In March 2023, he said he was asked to meet with the project's executive director, Roeshana Moore-Evans, and the Harvard staff member overseeing the initiative, the public health professor and vice-provost for special projects, Sara Bleich. These informal meetings were held in a boardroom in the student center, a tall glass building overlooking the gates of Harvard Yard. It was here and during extended phone calls that Cellini claims he was told repeatedly by Bleich 'not to find too many descendants'. 'At one point the fear was expressed that if we found too many descendants, it would bankrupt the university,' he said. Cellini told Bleich that was 'ludicrous', he said. Was he supposed to falsify the evidence, to destroy it, to ignore it? 'I asked for guidance, and the answer was that she didn't know,' he said, 'but we shouldn't report too many descendants.' Bleich denies this. 'The university never issued a directive to him to limit the number of direct descendants that could be identified through the work,' she told the Guardian during a phone interview. Moore-Evans declined to comment on the meetings. In the process of trying to get additional funding for the project, arguing that the amount of work had increased tenfold because of all the additional names that were being uncovered, Cellini met with the finance director for the president's office, Patricia Harrington, this past fall. Harrington wouldn't give him a clear answer about his funding request, telling him, 'Unfortunately you keep finding more slaves,' he said, and that 'every new person is a source of guilt and shame for Harvard'. A spokesperson for the university said: 'Any assertion that Patricia Harrington disparaged the work of the Legacy of Slavery Initiative, including descendant research, is false.' Even though Cellini was eventually given a budget for 2025, albeit a fraction of what he had asked for, the university would soon halt his work entirely. The early days of discovery were a golden time for Lloyd and her immediate family. Together with Lloyd's father, Dennis, and Chen, they would meet over Zoom and swap stories. Her dad was sharing parts of family history that Lloyd had never heard before: about his soft-spoken mother and his dad, who owned a flower shop in a neighborhood of Boston called Charlestown. 'People will open up to a stranger in a way that's more honest and unfiltered, wanting to be thorough in a way that you would never with your family,' Lloyd said. Chen, in turn, detailed the findings of her research to the Lloyds and they began to fill in their histories, tracing connections to the colonial period and height of the 'triangular trade'. Lloyd's ancestor seven generations back, Cuba Vassall, was three years old when she was forcibly moved from Antigua to a suburb of Boston along with her family by Isaac Royall Jr, in 1737. The Royalls were the largest slave-owning family in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, owning nearly 70 enslaved people who labored on a 500-acre plantation just north of Boston, as well as controlling more than 100 people on their plantation in Antigua. Before long, Lloyd's ancestors were transferred to another wealthy Cambridge family, the Vassalls, for whom they labored in an elaborate Georgian mansion currently known as the Longfellow House, near the campus of the then growing Harvard University. The Vassalls owned plantations in Jamaica where more than a thousand people were enslaved. Edward Taylor was a Harvard graduate, along with his brother Lewis, who once paid for a portion of his tuition with a large barrel of sugar, one of the most lucrative commodities produced by enslaved people. Cuba's original enslaver, Isaac Royall Jr, didn't have any direct ties to Harvard while he was living, but he endowed a professorship in his will, likely to ensure his legacy would live on as a member of the colonial elite. The seal of Harvard Law School was the Royall family crest until 2016, when students protested to demand its replacement. The Royall professorship was retired in 2022. At the Longfellow House, Cuba met and married a man named Tony, originally from Jamaica, who was also enslaved by the Vassalls. They had six children, including Lloyd's ancestor Darby. During the American revolutionary war, the royalist Vassalls fled and the house was occupied by George Washington, who used it as his headquarters during the siege of Boston. According to one anecdote, Washington asked then six-year-old Darby to work for him, who replied he wouldn't work without wages. After the war, Tony and Cuba petitioned the state to stay in a small dwelling on the property, where they cultivated a piece of land for farming. They had both spent 60 years of their life in slavery, Tony wrote in the 1781 letter, and 'though deprived of what makes them now happy beyond expression yet they have ever lived a life of honesty and have been faithful in their master's service'. He appealed to the court's sense of morality, writing: 'They shall not be denied the sweets of freedom the remainder of their days by being reduced to the painful necessity of begging for bread.' His petition to stay in the house was refused, but Tony was given an annual pension, one of the earliest examples of a formerly enslaved person receiving compensation. Tony's son Darby went on to become an important figure in the burgeoning free Black community of Boston. He was an activist throughout his life, supporting the abolitionist movement, becoming a founding member of the African Society of Boston and adding his name to a state petition to protect Black people against the Fugitive Slave Act, along with his daughter and son-in-law. At the end of his life, Darby chose to be buried in the Vassall family tomb underneath Christ Church in Cambridge, which Lloyd and her family went to visit last June. The tomb is in the basement, in a low-ceilinged crypt locked behind heavy black metal doors, and a couple inches of a curved brick structure, peeking above the granite dust floor, is the only indication. A dried flower arrangement that Lloyd left is still there, a tidy pile of lavender, white chrysanthemum and clover. Making these connections and being able to visit her ancestor's grave brought Lloyd a deep sense of 'internal certainty and peace and comfort and groundedness', she said. 'I would want that for everyone whose family is somehow affiliated.' Yet the joy and excitement comes with a 'deep sadness'. 'Why hasn't this been resolved?' she wondered aloud during an interview phone call. 'Why did no one in my family know?' Lloyd's only contact from the administration, she said, was an 'icy' interaction with Brown-Nagin during a group call, and she has heard nothing since. 'Naively, I was expecting them to be very welcoming and excited to facilitate discussion,' she said. 'I was hoping they would be warmer, more open to reconcile the long history.' The university says it has not begun the outreach process. Since the initiative was announced, the university has given out more than $4m in grants to local organizations and built out partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities, such as the Du Bois Scholars Program. 'This is by far the hardest job that I've had,' Bleich, who oversees the Harvard Legacy of Slavery initiative, said. 'We are very serious about this, and we are very sincere.' In late January, as he was pulling his car into the parking lot of Harvard Business School, prepared to begin another day of research in the university archives, Cellini received a call from an HR person that said him and his team were fired, effective immediately. He was never given an explanation, he said, and a university spokesperson told the Guardian 'we cannot comment on personnel matters'. The genealogy research, the university announced after Cellini's firing, would be continued through an 'expanded partnership' with American Ancestors, the genealogy non-profit that had already been working closely with Cellini's team. 'They're the world's best genealogists,' Cellini said. Based on his team's research in the Harvard archives identifying school leaders, faculty or staff who owned enslaved people and the names of the people they enslaved, American Ancestors would then search 'downstream', as Cellini put it, for living descendants. In this new agreement, the organization has taken over all aspects of the research. The initiative received its first public blow last spring, when two university professors on the committee to create a memorial stepped down, saying in an open letter the university had attempted to 'dilute and delay' their efforts to reach out to descendants. The committee was formed in 2023, based on one of the recommendations of the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery report to 'honor enslaved people through memorialization'. In a statement made to the student newspaper, a spokesperson for the university said it 'take[s] seriously the co-chairs' concerns about the importance of community involvement and of taking steps that will enable Harvard to deeply engage with descendant communities'. A couple weeks later, the executive director of the initiative, Moore-Evans, stepped down, after reporting conflicts with the university administration to HR. She told the Guardian that she left for 'personal reasons'. Cellini suspects the reason he was fired is simple: 'We found too many slaves.' The university was afraid that identifying descendants would bankrupt the university and so each name that his team identified was 'expensive', he said. The work that he oversaw is 'just the tip of the iceberg', he added, estimating that the numbers of living descendants could be about 10,000 people. Cellini had just come back from Antigua a couple days prior, where his team had visited the site of the Royall plantation as well as four other plantations with ties to the university. They also found a hundred additional names of enslaved people with ties to the university in public archives, he said. Cellini and his team met with the prime minister and governor general of Antigua, who had expressed interest in working with the university to explore this connection. Cellini said he detailed his meetings with the politicians to the university, but those requests were never answered and he was fired shortly after. The Antiguan ambassador to the US, Sir Ronald Sanders, wrote a letter to the university after learning that Cellini was fired, writing that the decision was made 'without consultation or notification'. The country wants 'real engagement and meaningful action that befits the benefits that Harvard derived', he wrote. 'We would not expect a cash payment from Harvard,' a spokesperson added. 'However, so well-endowed a university with expertise in a number of areas can be helpful to our country.' The cabinet discussed the possibility of Harvard funding ancestry research to identify descendants of Antiguans that were brought to colonial Massachusetts, and seeking the university's assistance in public health matters to address the high rates of chronic illness on the islands. A spokesperson for Harvard said a letter had been sent in response, but refused to elaborate. The spokesperson for Antigua said, 'I have not seen a response,' and could not confirm if a response had been received. The Royall plantation, which likely stretched across 200 acres down to Port Royal Bay, enslaved more than 100 people. Only the ruins of the sugar windmill remain, on private property. The stone structure stands a hundred feet tall on a grassy field bordering some woods. Here, enslaved people lived and worked on a plantation, feeding sugar cane into metal rollers through a dangerous and physically exhausting process to make syrup. 'It's pretty visceral,' Cellini said about visiting the site. 'This is where lives were spent and exhausted and consumed for the production of sugarcane, for the wealth of the British empire.' Ever since being contacted by Chen, Lloyd has felt the weight of her family history and a sense of responsibility. Her ancestors repeatedly petitioned for their freedom, for their rights and their humanity. Darby and his sister Flora had both been separated from their family by their enslavers as young children. Tony Vassall bought his daughter's freedom, and when his enslaver died by injuries sustained at the battle of Bunker Hill, six-year-old Darby walked 10 miles home to his family. The family had been staunch abolitionists and activists, suffered through bondage, and fought for their freedom. Lloyd struggles with where that leaves her. 'I just don't know where to begin,' Lloyd said. She considers taking to social media, calling the administration and making demands. Should she protest? She doesn't know. Lloyd's sister, who declined to be interviewed for this article, went to Antigua and Lloyd said she's also interested in going. 'I would go anywhere to talk to anyone at this point,' she said. 'Except Harvard, because there's no one I really trust there right now.' 'I feel like I'm still close to the explosion,' she said. 'My ears are still ringing.'

Elle

a day ago

• Elle

Elizabeth Banks Didn‘t Think She'd Marry Max Handelman When She Met Him at 18

Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. Actress and producer Elizabeth Banks has been with her husband Max Handelman for over 30 years, and her career in Hollywood would look totally different without him. They've each brought their unique skills and perspectives to not only marriage but a business partnership that has created some of the silver screen's greatest hits in the last decade. And they love talking about it. Here's everything to know about Max Handelman and his relationship with Banks, as well as all their projects together. Handelman and Banks have been living parallel lives since college, so a lot of the producer's history has been influenced by his wife. Handelman grew up in Portland, Oregon, where he graduated from Catlin Gabel High School. In 1991, Handelman headed to the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied communications, per a 2020 interview with Portland Monthly. They met and immediately connected. Following graduation, Banks moved to New York to pursue acting, and he went right along with her, where he first began a career as an investment banker. When they headed to the West Coast, Handelman continued his education at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, where he received his MBA. The man has a lot of talents, and began a new venture as a sportswriter. He co-wrote a book published in 2006 called Why Fantasy Football Matters: (And Our Lives Do Not). In 2002, Banks told Porter that she 'dragged him' into filmmaking, forming their production company, Brownstone Productions. 'He worked an 80-hour week; I was traveling all the time in a career that requires me to film on location for up to six months of the year,' Banks said. 'Forming the company really was about trying to combine our professional and personal goals.' It made sense for them to work together instead of apart. Banks told The Hollywood Reporter in June 2019, 'When we were looking at how to make a life together, I felt like he was a real bloodhound for material and had a really good eye for things.' And the experience of writing his book is in part what led to the wildly successful Pitch Perfect films. In 2015, Banks told NPR in an interview that Handelman's book agent sent him and Banks a proposal for a book about a cappella groups by Mickey Rapkin, which the first film was eventually based on. She explained, 'When we first read the book proposal, we thought, 'Wow, this is a really fun group of oddballs who like to make music with their mouths. This could be a fun idea.'' Aside from Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2, Handelman has produced Surrogates, The Most Hated Woman in America, Shrill, 2019's Charlie's Angels, Cocaine Bear, and Bottoms. In 2016, Banks told Vanity Fair, 'We have always made decisions that kept us together as a couple. We like working together. We're good at working together.' That same year, she told the Producers Guild of America, 'We're pretty yin and yang,' describing Handelman as 'very diplomatic and business-minded and calm' and herself as 'fiery' and 'emotional.' Banks said that they met on her first day of college during a 2012 Conan interview. 'He was wearing a vest with no shirt,' she quipped. 'To show off his sexy physique back in the day. He looked exactly like Jason Priestly from 90210, c'mon.' Banks continued, 'I dated the same guy all throughout high school, and I basically—and he knows this so, this is no surprise to him—cheated on him with my now-husband.' Their first date was at a jazz club, which Banks described as 'the greatest date' of her life. In a 2022, episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, Banks went into more detail about meeting Handelman at a frat party. 'The main thing I remember is that he was not that interested in me. He would say otherwise, but he was pursuing me a little bit. I was pursuing him for sure, and he was also pursuing this really cute girl named Kate,' Banks revealed. She says she tried to give Handelman her phone number, but he told her he didn't have a phone, which was actually true. But she replied, ''If you don't want my number, dude, you can just say so. Don't pretend you have, like, no ability to ever figure out how to call me. There are phones in this world. You can find a phone if you care.' They stayed together through college and married about a decade later. Banks told Allure in 2015 that she didn't start out a relationship with Handelman with that intention, it's just how it worked out. 'I didn't meet my husband and think, 'I've met the man I'm going to marry,'' Banks explained. 'I was like, He's cute. I'll fuck him, because I'm 18 and in college.' She added, 'Really, what happened was I've never met anyone that I liked more. In the early years, did I have crushes or little interests here and there? I know my husband did, and so did I, but we stayed together. We still to this day take the long view.' Their wedding was on July 5, 2003, and held at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, InStyle reported. The couple welcomed their son Felix via surrogate in 2011 and then their second child, Magnus Mitchell, in 2012, also via surrogate. On Call Her Daddy, Banks discussed her fertility struggles and how she talks about surrogacy with her sons. 'I've never been pregnant, and when I was young, I thought it was because I was really good at taking the pill, which I definitely was. But I have no idea. There's a small percentage of women who basically have unexplained infertility, and that is me, I'm in that category,' Banks said. 'I had always had plenty of eggs; I never had trouble making embryos; they did not implant. For whatever reason, my uterus is hostile, I don't know what's going on, but they just will not stay in there. So I had a broken belly, is what I told my kids, mommy had a broken belly.' She described the process of mourning her fertility and feeling responsible, even though she knew objectively it was not anything wrong she was doing. Banks also said that, at the time, surrogacy was a much more unusual choice, and she wasn't certain it was the right one. 'I had a great friend who was like, 'At the end of the day, there's gonna be a baby and you're gonna be a parent and nobody's gonna care how it happened,'' Banks shared. 'The other great advice I got was like, 'Is your goal to be pregnant or to be a mom?' And I was like, 'Oh, shit. It's just to be a mom. Right. I don't need to be pregnant, fuck, I just want the baby.' So it was like what's the best way to get to the baby? What are you doing? Who cares about the pregnancy? Get the baby.'

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• Black America Web

Desi Banks To Star In Sitcom At BET Studios Based On His Life & Comedy

Source: Stephen J. Cohen / Getty Comedian and viral content creator Desi Banks is making the leap from social media and the stage to your TV screen. The Atlanta-born comic is developing a half-hour sitcom with BET Studios, loosely based on his real-life experiences and comedy routines. Read more inside. Variety reports the untitled multi-camera comedy will follow a 'lovable yet stubborn comedian on the rise as he attempts to balance fatherhood, relationships, and the pursuit of his ever-present dream.' The premise mirrors Banks' own life journey. From creating viral sketches online to performing on national tours alongside comedy giants like Mike Epps, Martin Lawrence, and Kountry Wayne, the show is set to be as entertaining as his stage act. Banks is co-writing the project with fellow Atlanta native Malcolm 'Champ' Heaggans. Both will also serve as executive producers on the series. The show's creative team is full of ATL synergy, with backing from Quality Films and 3 Arts Entertainment's new Atlanta-based office, run by Jermaine Johnson. This sitcom marks a major milestone for Banks, who built his brand from the ground up. As CEO of Desi Banks Productions, he's created over 3,500 original videos, starring in skits with big names like Kevin Hart, 21 Savage, and Ludacris. He's also partnered with major companies like Red Bull, Meta, DraftKings, and DoorDash, becoming one of the most bankable names in digital comedy. While he's best known for his sketch characters and hilarious takes on Southern life, Banks has also proven he's got onscreen presence, with roles in films like Little , Haunted Trail , and One of Them Days . His new sitcom gives him the opportunity to blend his comedic voice with scripted storytelling on a mainstream platform—something many fans have long anticipated. Currently on the road with his Elevation Tour —the follow-up to his successful Purpose Chaser Tour —Banks continues to build momentum in the comedy world. His BET sitcom could be the next big chapter in a career that's already reshaped the blueprint for how comedians can break through in the digital age. With Atlanta as both the backdrop and creative hub for the new series, and Banks' real-life experiences as inspiration, this sitcom has all the makings of a show that's both authentic and hilarious. Keep your eyes on BET—Desi Banks is coming to prime time. Congrats! SEE ALSO Desi Banks To Star In Sitcom At BET Studios Based On His Life & Comedy was originally published on Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE