TV One has produced its first feature length film and it’s about the beautiful and talented Miki Howard, one of the few women ever considered competition for Whitney Houston. Howard’s career as an R&B singer peaked between the mid-80s and early 90s and then her distinctive voice disappeared from the airwaves. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think hers was just the plight of yet another chanteuse, but Howard’s story ran much deeper than many of us knew.
Played by the lovely and multifaceted Teyonah Parris (Mad Men, Chi-Raq) Howard’s rise in the music industry—and subsequent fall because of its vices—isn’t unique in and of itself. What makes her story different is that she’s still here to talk about it.
It becomes clear, just minutes into the film, that Howard is a survivor. Kicked out of her house as a teenager by a gospel-singing mother with an unstable lifestyle, Howard basically created her own opportunities in life.
Raw talent and ambition brought her to the attention of Side Effect group member and producer Augie Johnson—played by the enchanting Gary Dourdan (CSI, A Different World)—who put her in the recording studio for the first time. When her singing career and love affair with Johnson stalled, instead of throwing up her hands in defeat, Howard took their two children and set out for bigger and better things.
After establishing a successful singing career, most notably with Atlantic Records and Giant Records, Howard’s personal problems derailed her. During what was perhaps the highest point in her career, she entered into a verbally and physically abusive marriage with a man named Eddie Phelps, played with equal charisma and sinister-ness by Amari Cheatom (Django Unchained, Night Catches Us). Phelps co-managed Howard and succeeded in alienating several people in the music industry with his violent negotiation tactics. It was also around this time that she developed a friendship with Chaka Khan, played expertly by daughter Indira Khan, and became addicted to crack cocaine.
A positive force in Howard’s life during this period was her friendship and subsequent love affair with Gerald Levert, played with humor and sensitivity by Darius McCrary (Family Matters, The Leftovers). Their relationship inspired several of Howard’s hit songs, but they were torn apart by drug abuse—both Howard’s addiction to crack and Levert’s abuse of prescription medication, which contributed to his death in 2006.
Howard’s sheer will and tenacity—whether it was overcoming difficult parenting, building a successful singing career, walking away from unhealthy relationships or kicking a drug habit—is a dominant theme in the movie and, indeed, in Howard’s life. After entering rehab and reclaiming her sobriety, Howard found herself back at square one, having to build her singing career all over again. And as she remarked in the film, that was something she had to do the first time around and it was something she knew she could do again.
Honorable mentions go to Vanessa Bell Calloway (The Preacher’s Son, Coming to America) who portrayed Howard’s mother; LisaRaye McCoy (Single Ladies, The Players Club) who delivered a brief but intense portrayal of record industry exec Sylvia Rhone, who ultimately became one of the most powerful women in the music industry; and the unnamed actor who gave a magnetic cameo portrayal of NWA’s Eazy-E, one of Howard’s many suitors.
Directed by Christine Swanson (Woman Thou Art Loosed, All About You), Love Under New Management is a harrowing but triumphant true story of a woman who refused to let anything rob her of what she felt she deserved and impair her ability to go after it. Hats off to Miki Howard and to TV One.
