Danielle Brooks has played many roles throughout her celebrated career, from Sofia in “The Color Purple” on Broadway to gospel singer Mahalia Jackson in a stirring biopic.
But the 35-year-old actress’ guiding force, both personally and professionally, is her Christian faith, and she’s not afraid to say so.
“I think it all has to start from there,” Brooks told The Christian Post. “You have to trust that God is bringing you to a project for a reason. Or sometimes, He’s saying no.”
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“And honestly, sometimes you hear a lot of nos. You hear a lot of rejections, and the faith is what keeps me going. If I didn’t have faith, I would’ve quit a long time ago.”
Despite years of accolades — including Tony and Emmy nominations and praise from critics and audiences alike — Brooks is keenly aware it could all change in a moment. It’s her faith, she said, that helps guide her amid the ups and downs of Hollywood.
“Even as successful as I am,” she says, “there have been moments where I’ve wanted to throw in the towel. It’s not an easy career. But I lean on God’s guidance to remind me that I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”
“When there’s a pause in my career, I try not to look at it as a loss,” she added. “I try to see it as a moment to reflect, to pivot, to home in on something new. Maybe that’s a craft I want to build toward, or a different creative path God’s leading me on.”
In her most recent project, Brooks, who shares a 5-year-old daughter with her husband, voices a slick, muscle-bound, emotionally wounded animated villain named Kitty Kat in the new family-friendly film “The Bad Guys 2.”
“I wanted to do something my daughter could watch,” Brooks said. “When ‘The Bad Guys 2’ came around, it was an easy yes.”
Rated PG, the core “Bad Guys” cast returns — Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Craig Robinson, Anthony Ramos, Awkwafina and Zazie Beetz — alongside new additions like Maria Bakalova and Natasha Lyonne.
In the sequel to the hit 2022 film, the newly-reformed bad guys are back and want to be contributing members to society, but nobody wants to hire an ex-con. Meanwhile, the gang find themselves hijacked into a well-oiled heist, helmed by a new team of criminals led by Kitty Kat.
But even animated heist films, especially ones as smart and stylish as ‘The Bad Guys 2,” have more on their minds than space chases and cheap gags. For Brooks, the story’s themes of redemption, identity and inner transformation resonated, and so did Kitty Kat.
“She’s not just bad for the sake of being bad,” Brooks says. “She’s ambitious, she’s strong, she’s been hurt, and she’s trying to prove something.”
In the film, Kitty Kat is vying for top criminal status alongside her henchwomen, Doom and Pigtail. She’s smart, capable, and unrelenting, but also shaped by pain. In one pivotal scene, audiences learn that Kitty was dismissed and devalued by a teacher early in life, a wound that shaped her sense of worth and drove her into a life of crime.
“Everybody has a story,” Brooks says. “When we hear Kitty Kat’s story, about how her teacher made her feel unimportant, now we understand why she’s become the villain.”
That empathy, she added, is part of what makes the animated world so special.
“Art should teach us to be better. It’s a mirror,” she said. “And I think this film really helps kids learn that they always have a choice in life. And even if you make the wrong one, you can always make a turn. You can always change the course of your life. You get to decide which track you want to be on. You always have a choice.”
It’s that redemptive arc, embodied most fully in Mr. Wolf, the series’ lead antihero-turned-good-guy, that Brooks believes makes “The Bad Guys” franchise so powerful, especially for young viewers.
“You don’t always win when you try to do good,” she says. “But you’re still doing what’s right. And I think kids need to see that.”
“If you watch the first ‘Bad Guys,’ I didn’t know if Wolf was really going to be reformed,” she added. “But he was. All of them were. So I definitely have faith that Kitty Kat can come on the right side of the road. “Redemption is for everyone, and Kitty Kat, she’s got determination, drive, strength, she just needs a little course correction.”
Director Pierre Perifel, who returned to helm the DreamWorks sequel after the original film’s success, previously told CP he hopes that through Kitty Kat, viewers will understand that people, especially children, can be unfairly labeled before they’ve had a chance to define themselves.
“She’s hurt,” Perifel said. “She’s literally where Wolf was before the first movie. She’s like Snake, she’s like all of them. She didn’t even do anything, and the teacher told her she didn’t belong here, just because of the way she looked.”
“It’s very relatable,” he said. “In particular for kids. … You get labeled without even doing anything necessarily bad. And she ended up falling victim to that labeling and rebelled against it.”
“But deep down, she’s not a bad character,” he said. “She’s just a wounded kid.”
While Kitty Kat is technically one of the “bad guys,” Brooks sees her character as a role model in more ways than one.
“She holds a lot of great qualities too,” Brooks says. “She’s very determined. She doesn’t give up. She’s strong. She’s ambitious. And I think that’s something young girls need to see. She literally goes to space for her goal. So, sky’s the limit, I guess.”
That’s also something Brooks says she shares with Kitty Kat: “I’m incredibly determined. When I set my mind to something, I don’t give up.”
Having conquered Broadway, prestige TV, film and now animation, Brooks says she’s praying for a new kind of expansion in her creative life.
“I’m praying to grow,” she says. “To expand beyond acting. I want to write. I want to direct. I want to try new mediums,” she says. “And I’m asking God to guide me, to direct people into my path, to help me take the next steps.”
“I just ask God to help me be OK with failing, if that’s what it takes to get there,” she added. “But hopefully, with God on my side, I might not have to take too many hits.
Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: leah.klett@christianpost.com
