Tommy And Codie Oliver Brought ‘Black Love’ To TV Like We Hadn’t Seen Before

From 2017 to 2022, Codie and Tommy Oliver revolutionized depictions of Black love on screen with their Black Love series. The OWN series showed married couples open up about the peaks and valleys of their love in a way viewers had never seen before, Blavity’s Shadow and Act previously reported. Black Love aimed to shift the stereotypical narrative about Black marriages and show what Black love really looks like.

Ahead of the Olivers‘ talk at this year’s Blavity Fest, read on for a look back on the pivotal show. The fest starts on Saturday and tickets are still on sale, so purchase yours now!

Codie and Tommy Oliver interviewed over 250 couples over the course of the show

Codie and Tommy started interviewing couples in September 2014, when they were engaged and hoped to learn more about what marriage is really like. In a video on the Black Love website, Codie explains that she’d long craved “a place where Black love stories live because it doesn’t exist and because I need to see it.”

“We know they’re out there, there’s just no visibility,” she remembers telling Tommy at the time in the video.

The show premiered on OWN in August 2017 and the Olivers went on to interview more than 250 couples throughout the show, which came to an end with its sixth and final season in 2022. Codie explained to Blavity’s Shadow and Act in an interview at the time that the reason for the show’s conclusion was multilayered.

“Logistically, Tommy and I are the only crew for the show. We do every interview together because we wanted to create an intimate space with the couples. And that’s taxing on our lives,” she said. “We love it, but it’s something that, as our family has grown, as our businesses have grown, it’s really hard to do it that way. But it’s still important to us, which is why we didn’t just change it. We decided that this should be the end of the series. So partially because of that and partly because it feels like we should quit while we’re ahead, for lack of a better description.”

To mark the end of the show, Codie and Tommy took center stage and shared their own love story. It was a big change, as the couple spent their entire marriage telling other people’s love stories on the show.

“I had no interest in doing it, being in front of the camera and doing any of it at all. But it is something that we’ve been asked about a lot, and we have been the benefactors of people sharing with us,” Tommy told Blavity. “Our relationship is certainly better because of the information that we’ve gotten and the relationships that have been formed, the counsel and support. And so it’s something that we thought made sense as we were ending the series.”

Viola Davis, Sterling K. Brown, DeWanda Wise and others appeared on Black Love

Black Love saw many couples tell Codie, Tommy and viewers their love stories. The first season featured Viola Davis and husband, Julius Tennon; Insecure alum Neil Brown Jr. and his wife, Catrina; Sean Patrick Thomas and his wife, Aonika, among others. The show went on to interview Sterling K. Brown and Ryan Michelle Bathe; DeWanda Wise and Alano Miller; Kirk Franklin, who’s also set to appear at Blavity Fest, and his wife Tammy, and others.