Tatyana Ali on the Power of Lifetime's "Giving Hope: The Ni'Cola Mitchell Story"

"One of the things I love about acting, and why I'm going to be an actor for life, is that it's always evolving and changing," she revealed while recently promoting the film. "Roles are always different, and the way the universe would have it, different roles come at different points in my life. I don't think I'd have been able to play Ni'Cola at a different point. It happened now for a reason, and I felt that there were things I could really bring to it and places where I understood … and that's the magic of acting for me.

"Also, working with our director Alpha (Nicky Kulowa), this incredibly gifted young Black woman, you don't get many opportunities to partner with a director," she continued. "There were things that didn't need to be spoken, that we understood between each other. It's hard to describe the sensitivities, language, motivations … It was the experience of a lifetime to be able to work with this Black woman director as a Black woman myself, telling this Black woman's story."

Mitchell (pictured above, right, with Ali) was already a successful author, publisher and speaker when she realized at a book signing her true calling was to help disadvantaged young girls. Her upbringing had presented her with a series of challenges, and later a battle with cancer, but it was her desire to empower young women that gave rise to Girls Who Brunch, seminars with a party atmosphere designed to be fun and insightful. With the aid of friends and family, the project gained national exposure and saw Mitchell named "A Woman of Worth" by L'Oréal, which lead to bigger sponsorship opportunities and her aiding tens of thousands of young women across the country.

"I loved this story," Ali said. "The script had me in tears, as it's very emotional. Not just at the points in the story where that's supposed to happen, but at the heart of the story. I was so excited to meet Dr. Ni'Cola as I'd become a fan after learning about her story. The highlight of this project really was meeting Ni'Cola, and Alpha, then the girls I got to work with. It was a great community of women on set who all came together. All these incredibly brilliant, talented, good Black women that I got to craft this story with is something that will never leave me."

Bringing her story to the screen, it was tantamount that Mitchell felt comfortable. She didn't want the project to sensationalize anything she had endured. "We did talk about [that]," Mitchell shared. "I appreciated that Alpha went [with] subtle things to showcase the trauma but not exploit it. That's what made me feel comfortable to even go further and deeper with seeing the process. When I came on set, I think I made everyone nervous as they didn't know what to expect. When they realized who I was, everybody came and cried at some point, talked about something that happened to them, and how they were honored to tell the story.

"Everybody from grips to PAs to lighting came to me, hugged me and cried with me," she continued. "Alpha took so much detail, from the angles that she shot to setting up the scene to make sure she caught the moment and the feel of that scene. That's what made me feel so comfortable. I haven't seen the final product, but I'm confident that it's wonderful because of what I'd seen produced [by] Alpha and Tatiana."

"It's definitely more difficult playing a real person," added Ali. "There's a different sense of responsibility in accuracy, honoring the truth of the story, and taking it from the page to actually shooting. There were times during the shooting I'd be in hair and makeup, and we'd be going over the scenes and rehearsing, and I would text Ni'Cola and be like, 'Could you talk to me real quick? This is where we're at in this story, how did that feel? I think it feels like this, am I right and does that feel right to you?' It's a completely different ball game because I'm not fabricating or imagining things. Well, there's a bit of that because I have to, but it's a totally different responsibility level that I was so excited to try.

"The big challenge for me with this was meeting some of those places," Ali shared in closing. "Meeting some of those places, you always bring some of your own experience to things, and that was tough. But [filming] the Girls Who Brunch events ... they became like real events and the true-meaning of the film."

Giving Hope: The Ni'Cola Mitchell story will be telecast on Easter Sunday, April 9, at 8 p.m. on Lifetime.

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