Last summer, “06880” profiled Courtney Kemp Agboh. The 1994 Staples High School graduate — who went on to Brown University, and earned a master’s in English literature at Columbia — is the creator and show runner of “Power,” a Starz series that premiered a month earlier. It was the 1st series she ever pitched.
Last night, Agboh was honored at a star-studded Hollywood event. She was 1 of Ebony Magazine’s “Power 100.” She — and fellow high-achievers like Oprah Winfrey, Pharrell Williams and Jason Collins — joined Quincy Jones, who received a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Courtney Kemp Agboh
As last summer’s story noted, she was “called the N-word a lot” growing up in Westport. (Her father, Herb Kemp, was a noted advertising executive.) She read college textbooks at age 8, Shakespeare at 10. She made up stories about the pieces on her chess set.
It was a long way from the nearly-all-white Westport of the 1980s and ’90s to Sunset Gower Studios in Los Angeles, where she works today.
And where her executive producer is Curtis Jackson — better known as the rapper 50 Cent.
In Hollywood, it doesn’t get more powerful than that.
Gosh how painful to hear that someone so talented was belittled for her race in this town I love so much. College textbooks at 8? Shakespeare at 10? She was way beyond being their equal, whoever those tomenters were. She was clearly their superior. But that knowledge can’t heal wounds caused to children.
Hi Dan,
If you ever speak to Courtney please tell her we bought her family home. We love it so much and my little girls adore living in Westport. If she ever wants to come by and see her old house we would love to have her.
Thanks
Michele Carey – Moody
Sent from my iPhone
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I’m both saddened and surprised to hear that about being called the N-word. I graduated from Staples in 1976, and it was not used even then.