Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Self Made: Inspired By The Life Of Madam C.J. Walker’ On Netflix, A Miniseries About The Hair Care Millionaire

The life of Sarah Walker (aka Madam C.J. Walker) is fascinating because she went from a washerwoman to a millionaire in the early 20th century, a time where it was nearly impossible for both women and people of color to make a name for themselves. But through sheer determination and an ability to not get down on herself, Walker made it. But can a miniseries based on her life be able to take her story and make it dramatic enough to watch?

SELF MADE: INSPIRED BY THE LIFE OF MADAM C.J. WALKER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Old-time-style black-and-white portraits of Black women with different hairstyles. A voice over says “It came to me in a dream. Hair is beauty Hair is emotion. Hair is our heritage.” We also see closeups of a woman getting a hot comb pulled through her hair.

The Gist: St. Louis, 1908. Sarah Breedlove (Octavia Spencer) is in an outdoor market, trying to hawk Addie Monroe’s Magical Hair Grower. When she starts telling the first person who approaches her about her story — she’s a washerwoman, working her fingers raw for very little money, and so stressed out her hair starts falling out — the fact that Addie’s hair grower helped her get her confidence back becomes a real selling point.

Addie (Carmen Ejogo) has been doing Sarah’s hair, while Sarah washes her clothes in exchange. When Sarah tells Addie that she wants to be a salesperson for her hair grower, Addie’s kindness turns toxic, as she says Sarah doesn’t have the right look (i.e. she’s too dark-skinned) to sell her product. Addie swipes some tins to prove her wrong, and when she gets back from the market to tell Addie that she sold out what she took, Addie tells Sarah that her place is washing her clothes.

Angry, Sarah starts creating her own hair grower, with the support of her daughter Leila (Tiffany Haddish) and boyfriend Charles James Walker (Blair Underwood). When she tests it out among her working-class friends, she finds that it not only helps their hair grow but doesn’t have the strong sulfur smell of Addie’s solution. As she starts to sell more, Sarah — now married to Walker — thinks that the family should move to Indianapolis to take advantage of the growing Black population there.

She and C.J. set up a salon in an old house on the outskirts of the city. Everyone, including Leila, her new husband John Robinson (J. Alphonse Nicholson) and C.J.’s father Cleophus (Garrett Morris), chips in. After a rough start, where they almost go broke, Sarah once again goes to an outdoor market and uses her prodigious speaking skills to convince working women that good hair will lead them to better lives. Business starts booming.

Then Addie moves to Indianapolis, sporting a shiner and a determination to knock Sarah out of business. She even touts her salon during a church service. Determined to come out on top, “Madam” Walker cuts the price of her hair grower, and orders start to strip the capacity of her salon to make it. When John, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, steps out for a smoke, the solution he was mixing explodes and burns down the salon. Addie tries to snag her customers as the fire smolders, but Sarah decides that the salon will be replaced by a factory.

Our Take: The four-part miniseries Self Made: Inspired By The Life Of Madam C.J. Walker moves along at a pretty rapid clip, as if it was a 3-hour biopic of the legendary self-made millionaire Sarah Walker. There’s a lot of story, based on On Her Own Ground by A’Lelia Bundles, to tell, from Walker’s humble beginnings as a washerwoman to the self-made hair care magnate that she became. And for some reason, three hours doesn’t seem to be enough time to tell it. It’s a tough task for showrunners Janine Sherman Barrois and Elle Johnson (LeBron James, Spencer and Kasi Lemmons are among the executive producers, and Nicole Asher wrote the adaptation), and we’re not 100% sure they were able to pull it off.

The show is very stylized, from the fantasy interstitials that punctuate each episode — in the first episode, we see Sarah boxing with Addie as a symbol of their battle — to the modern soundtrack to the jump cuts that come out of nowhere. But it’s also very elegant, from the beautiful early 20th-century costumes to the depictions of burgeoning cities like Indianapolis. Those elements combine into a very watchable experience, even if it can induce a bit of whiplash at times.

To be sure, Spencer shines as you’d expect the Oscar winner would. Veterans like Underwood and Morris hold her own in scenes with her, despite her powerful presence as Sarah, who’s always thinking three steps ahead of everyone. Haddish holds her own as Leila, though sometimes you can tell that she and Spencer are acting at two different skill levels. Ejogo is a good rival for Sarah’s intensity, making Addie one of the more passive-aggressively back-stabbing characters we’ve seen so far this year.

We just wish there was more time to take a more deliberate look at Walker’s life, four 45-minute episodes feels like something we would have seen on OWN or Lifetime, not a place like Netflix, where showrunners are allowed to slow down and contemplate their subjects.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: When Sarah vows to Addie that “I’ll leave you in the dust” by building a factory, she tells her, “When you address me, call me Madam C.J. Waker.”

Sleeper Star: We always welcome the presence of Garrett Morris, bringing his lightness and jovial acting style to any project. We mostly enjoy him here, except for the scene we mention below.

Most Pilot-y Line: In one scene, Celophus berates his son C.J. for not being his own man and doing his bidding for Sarah. When C.J. says that it’s “their business,” his dad scoffs at that. “Never get your money where you get your honey,” Celophus says. While we get that the scene is a reflection of the times, especially in the Black community, it feels tacked on, even if C.J. decides to strike out on his own later on.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Standout performances by Spencer, Ejogo and more make Self Made a pleasurable watch. It’s just too bad that the story of Madam C.J. Walker isn’t given time to slow down and breathe.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Self Made: Inspired By The Life Of Madam C.J. Walker On Netflix