There’s no telling what’s to come for Season 4 just yet, but Pinnock tells Nemiroff of all the things she’s most excited to dive into next, it’s the numerous layers behind her character. For three seasons, we’ve known how Alberta “lives for the applause,” but what does that say about her character? “She is quite insecure and that the confidence is really just a mask for the fearful little child that she actually is,” Pinnock says. “For me, what I would like to see in Season 4 is how she became the confident diva that we know because I don’t think she always was that. I don’t think she came out of the womb confident. I think she kind of had to build that hard exterior to survive in the 1920s as a Black woman, as a Black artist, and a Black performer, and also the people that she was rubbing shoulders with, as well, too.”
Pinnock reveals one of the things that she pitched to Port and Wiseman was something personal to the actor herself. “I know for me when I was pursuing my dreams of being an actor, I had so many side hustles, and so I was like, ‘Outside of singing, what was Alberta doing to pursue this dream? Did she work at the local 1920s ShopRite? Was she selling newspapers? Was she the Mary Kay and Avon lady?’ I just imagine her selling little lipsticks and all kinds of stuff trying to get commissions. I was like, ‘There’s so many things!’ So I’m very curious about that.”
In Season 2, Alberta also had a chance to meet her great-great-grand-niece, Alicia (Ashley D. Kelley) in the episode, “Alberta’s Podcast.” Pinnock admits it’s this layer of her character’s life that she would hope the show explores more. “We learned that Alberta never had the chance to have children, so my other question was like, ‘Was she trying? Was there someone very special that she may have been trying with?’ Those are kind of some of my Season 4 [questions], and then my silly one — because she’s always speaking Yiddish, like randomly in these episodes, I was like, ‘Does our girl need a Bat Mitzvah? I’m ready.’ We don’t know anything about Alberta’s spirituality and religion, or if she has any of it, or if she’s trying to convert, and I’m like, ‘I would love to go to Hebrew school with Trevor,’” she laughs. “To have these scenes, I just would love it. So, these are some of my pitches. Who knows if it’ll make it, but that’s what I’m hoping.”
