Da’Vine Joy Randolph on Guardian Angels, Fashion Statements and Producing Her Own Travel Show
Words: Grace Barber-Plentie | Photographer: Sabrina Halle Miller | Makeup: Austin Sather | Hair: Tai Simon | Styling: Malcolm Baron Smith | Lighting Director: Jacob Botelho | Lighting Assistants: Simon Vidas & Tom Mendenhall
Da’Vine Joy Randolph is no stranger to guardian angels. Throughout her career, she’s been lucky enough to be taken under the wing of some older legends - Eddie Murphy, Steve Martin and Martin Short and Tracy Morgan to name just a few: “‘What was consistent across the board was that they really reinstated in me that I was special, and that I really had a gift.” She tells me over Zoom. “They really showed support and motivated me and inspired me.”
With guardian angels already present in her life, it’s perhaps no wonder that she’s ended up playing one in her latest film Eternity (2025). While the main focus of the film is the love triangle that forms when Elizabeth Olson’s Joan is reunited with her husbands Larry (Miles Teller) and Luke (Callum Turner) in the afterlife, it’s Randolph and co-star John Early - who Randolph gushes about, describing him as “lovely and so unique” - who frequently steal the show.
Randolph plays Anna, a free-spirited angel charged with helping the curmudgeonly Larry, and while she may lack a halo and wings, she more than makes up for the lack of angelic attire with a series of gorgeous blond bombshell hairdos. In one of the film’s Best Bits, every time Anna appears in the film, she’s wearing a new hairstyle.
This was a conscious choice that she had a hand in, Randolph says. The film is filled with homages to 1960s style and what initially began as a collaboration with red carpet hair stylist Tai Simon quickly developed into Anna’s many signature styles. Long, short, up-do - they’re as fun, campy and fashion-forward as the looks that Randolph also sports sitting front row at fashion shows and during last year’s award season where she walked away with numerous awards including a Golden Globe, BAFTA and Oscar for her heartbreaking and warm performance in Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers (2023).
Dress: Jonathan Marc Stein | Cape: Gert-Johan Coetzee
“I don't want to just put on a cute dress just to put on a cute dress. I want it to impact people. I want to make a statement.”
Earrings: House of Emmanuele
A passion for fashion was instilled in her at an early age. “When I was growing up” she notes, “It was ingrained in me that there are those who are stylish, and those who are fashionable. Fashionable it's kind of like, short term, trends that come and go. But stylish is timeless, and you make a statement. I don't want to just put on a cute dress just to put on a cute dress. I want it to impact people. I want to make a statement.”
The idea of being fashion forward, or in this case, a style icon, is all the more prescient when you’re a black curvy woman, navigating an industry where often clothes and trends may be inaccessible to you. But Randolph is well up to the challenge, stating that: “No matter what size you are, it doesn't mean that you have to limit yourself. It just sometimes requires preparation and creativity and thinking outside the box, but there's always a way around.”
Top: Blackwood Castle | Dress: Selkie | Jewellery: IVAR
Dress: Blackwood Castle | Jewellery: IVAR
In order to achieve her incredible looks, Randolph is always researching and sharing inspirations with her team, whether they come from the Old Hollywood movies that she loves (Her Letterboxd Top Four includes Shirley Macclaine’s What a Way to Go! (1964), which she loves ‘for the fashions’) or the travelling that she regularly does to wind down from shooting. Rest assured, her research has already begun for the Eternity press tour. Moving away from the Old Hollywood style cinched gowns she wore on 2024’s red carpet, this time it’s all about what she describes as “ballet core meets bridal core meets angel core” - think soft, flowing, feminine and earthy.
Just like her fashion choices, the roles that Randolph has selected over the years have been exciting and challenging, seeing her move between genres and mediums - she began her career playing Oda Mae Brown in the Broadway and West End productions of Ghost: The Musical, before booking roles in TV shows including Selfie, This is Us and On Becoming a God in Central Florida. The only thing these roles had in common? That they had nothing in common. “I’m very intentional with the types of projects I pick,” she notes. “Once I've completed one thing I make very clear to my team, now I need something in a completely different direction.”
In 2019 she had a stand-out role, one that led to her being cast by Morgan in The Last OG (2019) and Payne in The Holdovers, as Lady Reed in the Eddie Murphy-starring crowdpleaser Dolemite is My Name (2019). Her star officially on the rise, she continued to gain acclaim for her role as Cherise in the TV reboot of High Fidelity (2020) starring Zoe Kravitz. A colleague of Kravitz’s Rob, Cherise is brash - she gets into an altercation with a customer when she refuses to sell her a Michael Jackson record - but with a heart of gold, quickly becoming a favourite character of the fans who flocked to the show for feel-good pandemic viewing.
Jewellery: IVAR
“Once I've completed one thing I make very clear to my team, now I need something in a completely different direction.”
However, as is often the way of the mysterious TV gods, despite the enthusiastic reaction to the show, it was cancelled after one season. All the more tragic as apparently the second season of the show was meant to have more of an in-depth focus on Cherise. Still, five years on, and after the success of Kravitz’s directorial debut Blink Twice (2024), a glimmer of hope still remains. “We hear you guys!” Randolph jokes. “I’ve talked about it a lot with Zoe. Do we do one last season? A movie? We’d love to try and figure it out.”
More supporting roles in TV and film followed High Fidelity, including a recurring role as a no-nonsense policewoman with a penchant for musical theatre on Only Murders in the Building, where she more than holds her own against aforementioned comedy legends Short and Martin. And then, after over a decade of work, The Oscars came calling for her role in The Holdovers. However Randolph is clear that winning awards hasn’t changed her work ethic. “I think the biggest thing for me is just to maintain how I've always been and not go against that or try to automatically change things up just because I now have an Oscar. I’m not looking to reinvent the wheel.”
She may not be reinventing the wheel but she is, however, sticking to her core belief of unpredictability and working on a hugely exciting new project - developing a new TV show that combines her passions for food and travel. “I really love to travel when I’m not working, and cooking is a great destresser for me”. She says excitedly. “When friends were travelling, I realised that all the places I was recommending to them were based around food!”.
Still, aside from just celebrating food for food’s sake, she’s also keen to shine a light on overlooked voices in the global food scene - “I also thought it was important to focus on women, as the food industry can be so misogynistic. I wanted to create this space to give women their props, from well-known chefs to Nonnas in little kitchens in Italy!”. From being guided by Hollywood actor guardian angels, to playing one, Da’Vine is finally being recognised as an angel in her own right.
