Georgia native plays Kevin Hart’s mom in new Netflix movie – Miami Herald

COLUMBUS, Ga.

Striving for three decades to receive a named role in a major film production, Columbus native Thedra Porter has reached that goal in a movie featuring one of Hollywood’s most popular stars.

Porter plays Kevin Hart’s mother in “Fatherhood,” a dramatic comedy based on a true story about how a widowed new dad raises his daughter. It’s streaming exclusively on Netflix.

“It really feels great,” Porter told the Ledger-Enquirer in a phone interview from New York City. “It’s very rewarding to be among the legends in this industry.”

She was referring to not only Hart but also actors Alfre Woodard and Frankie Faison, the latter to whom she looked up while she made her way up in the industry.

Porter, 60, was educated in Muscogee County schools: Fifth Avenue, Dimon, Rothschild and Kendrick (Class of 1978). Her parents, Mattie and Newman Crawford, are retired and still live in Columbus. Newman worked for Atlanta Life Insurance, and Mattie was a secretary at Spencer High School and Davis Elementary School.

ANOTHER SIDE TO KEVIN HART

Acting with Hart was a joy, Porter said.

“Every day on set,” she said, “he was always encouraging and saying, ‘Let’s have fun.’”

But the comedian has a serious side as well, Porter said.

“He’s a gentleman,” she said. “He really is.”

The movie was filmed in Montreal and Boston. It was expected to be shown in theaters last year, but the coronavirus pandemic changed the distribution plan, Porter said.

That complication, however, didn’t drain her appreciation for the most significant role of her career.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “You have no idea. I have been in the business for decades, and I just kept honing my craft. I always say, ‘Don’t give up but give out when you have a passion for something.’ It’s just made me feel that I have grown, escalated and got to the bigger world of the industry.”

ACTING JOURNEY

Porter started acting in elementary school plays. Then she became a baton twirler and a cheerleader in junior and senior high. After graduating from Florida A&M University, where she majored in theater and minored in computer science, she acted in local theater productions around Atlanta while working for BellSouth and AT&T.

Her breakthrough came in the mid-1990s, when she appeared as a teacher in the NBC then CBS TV series “In the Heat of the Night,” when it was filmed in Covington, Georgia.

After her daughter graduated from high school, Porter’s husband encouraged her to pursue acting full time.

“I needed to do this now,” she said.

So they moved to New York City in 2009. Guest roles in TV series such as NBC’s “Law & Order: SVU” and “The Blacklist” followed. Now, she is acting in a short film called “I Do, But Then Again” and auditioning for other productions.

“That’s the life of an actor,” she said. “I am moving on every day.”

ADVICE FOR PERSEVERING

Porter encourages folks to not let their identity and self-worth be defined by their goals. The key, she said, is to find a balance between pursuit and perspective.

“You have to stay grounded,” she said. “You stay centered within yourself.”

And bring along a dose of reality, Porter said.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re a star or a character actor,” she said. “You just be the best you can be. You’re not the one who decides if you’re going to be a star. It’s the people around you. … That’s the business side of acting. I understood that early on in my career.”

Regardless of the role, Porter said, she cherishes being part of a film.

“I enjoy the process,” she said. “I enjoy the reading of the script, understanding the character, building the character, diving into it, putting my life within that character, bringing my experience along with that. I like the whole process of getting into my own little world and creating this person.”