Spelman College is known for producing shining stars, and actress Adrianna Mitchell is one of them. The Spelman alumna and Atlanta native has landed a role on the Tracy Morgan-led sitcom on Paramount+, “Crutch.”
“Crutch” is a spin-off of the incredibly popular CBS sitcom “The Neighborhood,” starring Cedric the Entertainer and Tichina Arnold. The show follows Morgan as a widower from Harlem named Crutch. To bridge the two sitcoms, Morgan starred in a recent episode of “The Neighborhood,” while Cedric and Arnold reprised their roles as Calvin and Tina Butler during the first episode. Crutch and Calvin are cousins, according to an article by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Mitchell stars as Crutch’s 32-year-old daughter, Jamilah, who travels with her two kids to Harlem from Minneapolis.
In the first episode, the basis of the sitcom unfolds when Crutch’s son Jake, played by Jermaine Fowler, graduates from law school. To Crutch’s surprise, Jake decides to take pro bono cases for Legal Aid instead of taking a high-paying lawyer job; because of this decision, he needs to go back home with his dad. To add to the chaos, Jamilah must also move back in with her dad after her husband leaches their family due to his gambling addiction.
Like many other projects Morgan has starred in, Crutch is an easy-to-watch show full of jokes. Some of Morgan’s best work includes his work on NBC’s “30 Rock” and TBS’s “The Last O.G.”
“Crutch” is following many other projects by going back to the way old-school sitcoms used to film with a live studio audience and three cameras. The network wanted to give the show an old sitcom feel, even down to the theme song.
“Even down to the song choice for our theme song, we wanted this to feel like an old-school sitcom,” Mitchell told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “And you can’t take the New York out of Tracy.”
Although this is Mitchell’s first regular TV role, she has a long history in theater. Mitchell left Gwinnett County, where she grew up, to move to New York City to pursue acting full-time. In 2022, she made her Broadway debut as Opal in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Fat Ham.” Although a resident of New York, Mitchell still has a strong connection to her roots in Atlanta. Her love for where she grew up influenced her decision to attend Spelman as well as to choose it as the place to give birth to her son. Mitchell says that she and the rest of the “Crutch” feel like a family.
“I think our chemistry as a family feels very authentic,” she said. “We did a scene where nobody hugged. That felt weird, so we hugged. Black people hug each other. We reshot the scene, and it felt right. We put a lot of love into this show.”
