We're Right on Top of That, Rose! 'Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead' Lands on BET+
If it doesn't sound familiar, then you haven't seen the 90s cult classic "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead." The title itself was enough to market the film in 1991, but it turned out to be less about a dead babysitter than a family of out-of-control kids forced by the sheer will of survival to get their act together. Via around-the-clock reruns on cable, "Don't Tell Mom" introduced a generation of young people to the corporate world — inter-office politics, backstabbing, and how to delegate responsibility.
The film's remake follows the same storyline with only slight updates. Director Wade Allain-Marcus (Derek, "Insecure") shared with Press Pass LA, "My kind of mandate was like let's not chase something that feels hyper contemporary, let's just do what feels good to us because the truth is culture moves so fast as it is . . . so instead of trying to make something that felt like very 2024 let's just try to make something that feels good to us because then hopefully it'll end up being timeless just like the original."
In the update, we meet Simone Joy Jones (Lisa, "Bel-Air") as the eldest Crandall child, Tanya. She has plans to party with friends before heading to college in the fall. But her mother (Ms Pat) has her vacation in mind and decides everyone stays put while she's out of the country. She forces Tanya to look after her younger siblings (including "Coming 2 America's" Jermaine Fowler as Gus) with the help of an elderly (and quite surly) babysitter. After a wild house party, the kids discover the babysitter is dead. As in the original, Tanya has to step up and take care of the household, landing a job with Nicole Richie's updated Rose, who becomes her professional mentor.
On updating the cast with black actors, Allain-Marcus notes, "When I went back and revisited the original I was like, oh yeah this this movie just works better black, because it is ultimately about young kids who are forced to be adults before their time and that's ubiquitous for young black kids."