How Saycon Sengbloh of The Wonder Years Unwinds
The New York Times The Wonder Years star takes care of herself with satin pillows, costume dramas and food that connects her to her Liberian roots.
When Saycon Sengbloh tried out for the role of Lillian Williams, the matriarch in ABCs reboot of The Wonder Years, she was also auditioning to be her bosss mother. The showrunner, Saladin K. Patterson, had decided that if he was going to remake the beloved sitcom this time looking at the late 1960s through the lens of a Black family in Alabama he was going to base the show loosely on his own family, starting with his parents, Bill and Lillian.
The central character in The Wonder Years is a teenager named Dean (Elisha Williams), but the story lines often revolve around Lillian. During the audition, conducted over Zoom, Sengbloh read a scene inspired by Pattersons childhood in which Lillian tells Dean that the pornographic magazines he found in the basement arent his fathers: Those are mine.
When Saycon read that, Patterson said in an interview, she was just magic on the screen.
