Regina Hall demanded the writers of her TV comedy Black Monday remove a joke mocking the late Whitney Houston's drug problems.
The show is set during the run-up to the October 1987 stock market crash that was the worst in Wall Street history. Back then Whitney was known as a clean-cut popstar, but passed away in 2012 after battling drug problems for years.
Speaking during a Hollywood Reporter Comedy Actress Roundtable, Regina revealed that she demanded a joke about the I Will Always Love You hitmaker was cut from the script out of respect.
"There was a joke, and I can't remember, but it was a joke I think about drugs and it was about Whitney Houston, and I was like, 'I don't want to say that,'" she remembered. "Artists give so much ... and so to make fun of what was a challenge and an illness. ... The great thing about our writers is they were like, 'Absolutely. We'll just do something else.'"
The show, which also stars Don Cheadle, Andrew Rannells, and Paul Scheer, focuses on a fictional second-tier Wall Street firm, which unusually employs traders from minority backgrounds, including Regina's character Dawn Darcy.
Explaining her character, she added: "It was great to be in the '80s and be successful, and be in a world that, no matter what colour you are, a woman who's Spanish, black, white - they just weren't really in Wall Street, and they still really aren't, so to represent a demographic that's not normally present in a world even today was fun."
