This summer, OWN and Will Packer are teaming up to bring a new scandal to television with their series Ambitions. Sexy, scandalous, and over the top dramatic, Ambitions, has a storyline to quench every TV lover's thirst. With an ensemble cast including Robin Givens, Brian J. White, Essence Atkins, Brely Evans, Kendrick Cross, and Erica Page, you'll love to hate them and hate to love them. "Delicious is the only way to describe it," says Robin Givens.
On Monday night (June 17), Atlanta's socialites amassed at the Gathering Spot in Downtown Atlanta to celebrate the premiere of this summer's sexiest show. Will Packer, Robin Givens, Essence Atkins, Brian White, Kendrick Cross, Brely Evans, Mara Hall, and Erica Page graced the carpet excited for the audience to witness what felt like television's best kept secret. Joining them in attendance were Marlo Hampton, Tameka (Tiny) Harris, Cynthia Bailey, former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, Green Leaf's Merle Dandridge, Real Housewives of Atlanta castmate Tanya Sam, actress Terri J. Vaughn, and If Loving You is Wrong actor Joel Rush.
Created by Jamey Giddens and produced by Will Packer, Ambitions follows the lives of sorority sisters turned frenemies Stephanie Carlisle (Robin Givens) and Amara Huges (Essence Atkins). As the old saying goes, one woman's ex is another woman's husband, and Stephanie can't abide by that code. Raised by wolves and fueled by ambition, Stephanie is on a mission to reclaim everything that rightfully belongs to her. Even if that means stepping over those closest to her. "This is a soap about politics but it's a fun, juicy; oh my God I can live vicariously through these rich people behaving badly,'' says Jamey.
Ambitions takes behaving badly to another level. Aside from politics and scandals, the sex scenes will have your eyes glued to the screen and jaw on the floor. Let Brely Evans tell it, "Everybody on Ambitions is getting some."
This is the type of show you can't stand to look away from. One turn of the neck and you could miss one of the steamiest, seductive sex scenes in soap opera history. "If you've read any of the reviews about Ambitions, there's a whole lot of sex going on in this show. So, just society today responds to that. So, there are a lot of good looking people having sex with one another. So, I'm going to tune in, I know that," says Joel Rush.
Unfortunately, we can't give all the juicy details away, but you might notice a very familiar face in the first episode. xoNecole's editor-in-chief Necole Kane makes her acting debut in her first-ever role. We see you boss lady!
For more behind the scenes footage from the Ambitions premiere, watch the video below. Be sure to catch Ambitions on OWN every Tuesday at 10pm.
INSIDE THE ATLANTA PREMIERE OF AMBITIONSwww.youtube.com
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Those rumors were more than laid to rest when Jodie and Joshua went to the 2023 Oscars together earlier this year, and even more recently, when they celebrated her birthday together last month during the September unveiling of the Lotus Emeya.
Jodie Turner-Smith celebrates her birthday with husband Joshua Jackson at the unveiling of the new fully-electric Lotus Emeya on September 07, 2023 in New York City.
Brian Ach/Getty Images for Lotus
Despite seeming particularly happy and in love, perhaps the writing was already written on the wall even then. In the past, Jodie has been very celebratory publicly about her love for her estranged husband, even boldly recounting their love story for the books in a 2021 interview with Seth Meyers.
When Jodie and Joshua met, it was while at his birthday party in 2018. Their relationship was hot and heavy from the start, with Jodie openly noting that they began as a "one-night stand." During her 2021 interview with Seth Meyers, she jokingly referred to their love story as a "three-year one-night stand." She shared:
"First of all, I saw him before he saw me and when I saw him, I was like, 'I want that.' And then when he saw me, I just pretended like I didn't see him. He had to yell across the room to me, and I was wearing this T-shirt from a movie called Sorry to Bother You and [actress] Tessa Thompson plays a character called Detroit, and she has this T-shirt that says, 'The Future Is Female Ejaculation.'
"And so, he shouts across the room, 'Detroit!' He comes over and… does this really cute, charming thing that he does and just all night -- he just basically followed me around the party."
The couple were together from that moment forth, and even made things "Instagram official" less than two weeks later while on a dinner date. Joshua would later clarify to Insider that the night they met in 2018 was not a 'one-night stand' or a 'three-year one-night stand' like his then-wife joked but instead, it was "technically a three-night stand."
"It was sealed with a kiss that night and then we didn't leave each other's sides for, well, three years now," Joshua continued at the time.
In a July 2021 interview with Jimmy Fallon, Joshua dropped more details about the why behind getting married. He revealed that he didn't know he wanted to get married to Jodie until "the moment she asked me."
"She asked me on New Year's Eve. We were in Nicaragua. It was very beautiful, incredibly romantic, we were walking down the beach and she asked me to marry her."
He added, "I did not know [she would propose], but she was quite adamant and she was right. This is the best choice I ever made."
Joshua Jackson Reveals Jodie Turner-Smith Proposed To Him
Jodie received quite a bit of flack for proposing to Joshua because it goes against tradition and what society sees as acceptable for a woman to do to a man, and proposing isn't one of them. No matter how much time has passed, the viewpoints around who should do the proposing and who should be proposed to are still very traditional.
After being on the receiving end of such backlash, Joshua would later clarify to the media in a separate interview that it wasn't just Jodie's proposal to him that sealed the deal of them getting married, he proposed to her too. She might have initiated it, but Joshua followed through.
"I accidentally threw my wife under the bus because that story was told quickly and it didn't give the full context and holy Jesus, the internet is racist and misogynist," he explained to Refinery29 that same year. "We were in Nicaragua on a beautiful moonlit night, it could not possibly have been more romantic."
David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images
He continued, "And yes, my wife did propose to me and yes, I did say yes, but what I didn't say in that interview was there was a caveat, which is that I'm still old school enough that I said, 'This is a yes, but you have to give me the opportunity [to do it too].'"
"She has a biological father and a stepdad, who's the man who raised her. [I said], 'You have to give me the opportunity to ask both of those men for your hand in marriage.' And then, 'I would like the opportunity to re-propose to you and do it the old-fashioned way down on bended knee.' So, that's actually how the story ended up."
Joshua and Jodie would eventually marry in December 2019. Shortly thereafter, Jodie gave birth to the couple's first child, Janie, in 2020.
In a recent interview with Elle UK, Jodie shared the ways becoming a mother to Juno helped to heal her of her wounds from colorism she experienced in the past. "It's interesting because I had a lot of resistance to becoming a mother and, throughout my life, I always said if I were to have children, I wanted to have Black, Black babies so that I could affirm them as children with the love that I felt I needed to have been affirmed with by the outside world," Jodie shared with the outlet.
She continued, "Then I fell in love with my husband and we talked about having kids. I did have this mini pause, where I was like, 'She's going to be walking through the world not only having an experience that I did not have, but looking like people that, in a way, I'd always felt a little bit tormented by.' Now that I've got this little, tiny, light-skinned boss, I feel like it’s the universe teaching me lessons. I've been given a daughter who looks this way to heal my own conversations around colorism."
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Featured image by Amy Sussman/Getty Images
