Mad Tv

Hollywood voodoo isn't real," says Ta'Shia Asanti. "The whole sticking pins in dolls thing--I don't know any voodoo priest or priestess who would do harm to anyone."

Asanti knows what she's talking about. She's an iya, or priestess, in the Vodun tradition, the African religion that most people know as voodoo. She's also something of a history maker, the first real voodoo priestess to star on primetime television. Mad Mad House, a 10-week series slated to premiere March 4 on the Sci Fi Channel, shows what happens when 10 everyday people move into a house with Asanti as well as a vampire, a Wiccan, a Modern Primitive (someone who practices body adornment as a path to spiritual awareness), and a naturist ("We've got more nudity than the Playboy Channel," jokes Asanti).

And here's the catch. The "Alts," as the show's unconventional residents are known, rule the roost. The "Guests" have to play nice with people they might otherwise consider to be punch lines or risk having the door hit them on their way out. It's the perfect revenge show for anyone who's ever been made to feel like a freak. Yet Asanti, whose calm, peaceful manner radiates warmth and goodness, doesn't think of it that way at all. "Yes, this show has more drama than The Young and the Restless. It was drama-queen heaven. Arguments occurred, but so did love and healing. The emotions fly. It wasn't contrived. It's what naturally happened, and I believe it's what has to happen in the world for us to grow as a people."

Raised as a Christian in Los Angeles by her minister father, Asanti says she yearned for something more. "When I found the African traditional religions, it felt like home to me. I spent most of my life looking at this picture of the Son of God on the church walls. This guy had blond hair and blue eyes, and I remember thinking, If this is the God of all people, why does he only look like one people?" After an intense period of study she became a priestess. Today the "30-something, same-gender-loving" journalist and author of The Sacred Door--a book on personal healing--conducts annual seminars on African spiritual traditions and lives in Denver with Pepper Massey, her partner of five years.

And she has high hopes for Mad Mad House in spite of how often reality shows are edited for maximum mockery and humiliation. "I was concerned," Asanti explains. "But everything was conducted with authenticity. Some of it's supposed to be funny, because that's how life is. But I hope people will get the sincerity and sacredness of what went on there. I know [the Guests] had every human reaction you could possibly have to a group of very different people. [They] were not prepared for what happened inside of them. Their lives are never going to be the same. I like to think that this show could be a model for social change. Maybe we can begin to think about our differences in a very real way."

White writes about film for E! Online.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Liberation Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

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