Season 2 of the Amazon Prime Video series Harlem is back after over a year’s hiatus, and fans are eating it up. While much of the focus is on the crazy love stories, a standout on the show is Shoniqua Shandi, who gives her larger-than-life character Angie much flavor. This season, Angie steps out on her own in a way that surprises her fans. And Shandai admits that it takes her friend group some getting use to.
Angie is the dreamer of the friend of the bunch in ‘Harlem’
Harlem follows the lives of four Black women in their 30’s at various stages of love and career who rely on one another to get them through life. Camille (Meagan Good) is a philosophy professor vying for tenure at the university she teaches at. Tye (Jerrie Johnson) is killing it in the tech space and lacking in the love department as an openly queer woman. Quinn (Grace Byers) is the conservative, more uptight one of the bunch who is the fashionista. And then there’s Angie (Shandai), a struggling artist who lands her big break in a local stage play only for it to come to an end prematurely, partially to her doing.
For fans of the iconic show Girlfriends, Angie is the equivalent of Lynn Searcy (Persia White), the drifter of the group, thought the one with the most academic achievement. Angie is closest to Quinn, and also her roommate. The two clash on her direction in life – or Quinn’s assertion of Angie’s lack thereof. But Angie refuses to be defined by society’s standards, or her friends.
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Shoniqua Shandai says Angie’s friend group is supportive in Season 2 but has to adjust to her glow up
In Season 2, fans see Angie shine as she gets a second chance at her dream career. Though she starts off down because of what transpired at the end of the first season, she quickly rebounds, but not everyone is quick to get on board as her star rises.
“I think it’s very easy to get trapped in the roles that you play in the dynamics of the group…” she told PopCulture.com about how her friends react to her newfound fame. “So I think it’s just once you kind of have a rhythm and we know each other, it takes something drastic for you to shift out of that. And they’re incredibly supportive, even more down to lying to her about how a play was. But I think the dynamics of that group would need something. She would need to get another deal, I think, at that point, for it to shift just because she’s been playing that role for so long within the group.”
More than anything, she says Angie’s glow-up is what’s needed to remind her of her talent. “I think a lot of Angie’s inner confidence is based on knowing exactly who she is, and it doesn’t really shift too much based on the circumstances around her, but it’s more so dependent upon her art. And her having such a low blow at the end of that finale, you really see her knee needing to almost pick herself back together again….I think you see her bounce back rather quickly.”
