Their Love Story Started with Hate Letters—See How This Interracial Couple is Winning Today

Actor Leslie Uggams has had an exciting career in both theater and film.

Even with a remarkable career spanning seven decades, the singer and actress from Harlem is best known for her role in the *Deadpool* series.

However, her marriage to White Australian Grahame Pratt in 1965 challenged expectations for interracial relationships, making her life story worthy of a movie.

In 1953, Leslie, a talented singer, recorded a song for MGM when she was just 10 years old. Her aunt, soprano Eloise Uggams, recommended that she attend the famous Julliard School of Music in New York and the Professional Children’s School of New York.

But her career didn’t stop after her musical success; in 1969, she hosted *The Leslie Uggams Show,* the first network variety show hosted by a Black person since *The Nat King Cole Show.*

Source: Getty Images

However, Leslie got to know and fell in love with actor Grahame Pratt behind the scenes. During one of her famous tours in Australia, the pair reconnected in Sydney after first meeting as students at the Professional Children’s School in New York.

Leslie was aware of the challenges of dating a white man because she had dated one in her youth and her aunt had discouraged her from thinking about a future with him. Leslie shared with Ebony in 1967, “I remember the shock I felt once when I was dating a white boy.”

He sent me a color photo of himself. I showed it to my aunt. He was a young, attractive man with nice hair. I thought he was very good-looking. But my aunt lectured me after she saw the picture. “Well, I guess he’s alright,” she said, “but only on dates, huh, honey? When you’re ready to settle down, you’ll marry a nice [Black] fella, won’t you?”

Leslie said that after their lucky meeting, she kept visiting Grahame.

“At just 21 years old, it was surprising that I started to fall in love with him.”

It would be a full year before she saw him again after she left Australia.

Leslie was worried about how her family would react and what would happen if Grahame moved to the U.S. for her job, but despite her worries, they had fallen in love. When they had been engaged for five months, Grahame visited her in New York.

“I wanted to know if my family would truly accept Grahame and not just tolerate him, knowing their views on mixed marriages,” she said.

Leslie didn’t have to worry because Grahame was Australian.

Source: Getty Images

“Many white Americans feel awkward about their situation, but he didn’t.” He got along well with my friends, so he easily fit in with them. And both the men and women liked him.

While living in New York, Leslie said she received hate mail because of their marriage, even though they didn’t face the same racial issues as many others in the country.

In an interview with PEOPLE, Leslie said about her marriage, “It wasn’t as difficult as I expected. I think it’s because Grahame wasn’t a white man in America.” Naturally, they did receive some negative mail.

Leslie shared, “I sometimes get anonymous letters about being married to a white man when I go on tour in the United States. I remember getting one, of all places, in Detroit.” It was addressed to “The Little Negro Entertainer.” Those letters were painful to read and often used that term.

Grahame took on the role of Leslie’s manager, and the couple had two daughters, Danielle in 1970 and Justice in 1976.

Leslie got the lead role in the miniseries Roots in 1977, a year after their second child was born. For that role, she was nominated for an Emmy for her character Kizzy.

Two years later, she played Lillian Rogers Parks in the miniseries Backstairs at the White House, earning another Emmy nomination for Best Actress.

In 1983, she won a Daytime Emmy Award for hosting the NBC game show Fantasy, and in 1996 she played Rose Keefer on All My Children.

Leslie has also made appearances on shows like Family Guy, I Spy, Hollywood Squares, The Muppet Show, The Love Boat, and Magnum P.I.

After fifty-five years of marriage and a granddaughter named Cassidy, Leslie and Grahame are still happily together.

“We have a lot of fun together, but it’s not always sunshine and roses,” Leslie said about their happy marriage. “We enjoy being together.”

Their love has stood the test of time and defied expectations. They support each other because they are loyal to one another and have always helped each other.

Check Out : ‘The View’ Audience Member Calls Whoopi ‘Old Broad’ During Live Broadcast.

An audience member during a recent episode of the ABC show “The View” called Whoopi Goldberg an “old broad.” It happened on Wednesday’s show when Goldberg and her cohosts took their seats to begin the show and the audience member shouted the words and Goldberg was taken aback.

We’re happy to see ya’ll. Cool, well, go on and have a seat, she said before addressing the heckler.
“Did you just call me an old broad? Yeah?” the 67-year-oId actress said to the heckler.

The camera then showed a woman who was wearing a large fur hat.
“She said, ‘You old broad,’ and I was like, hey, it’s Wednesday, and I am an old broad, and happy about it,” the host said before cohost Sunny Hostin said that being an “old broad” was better than “the alternative.”

The aIternative is not attractive to any of us, the stress said. “We all want to be old broads and old dudes, you know? The show’s cameras continued to show the woman again and again for the entire episode.
Goldberg caused controversy in December after making controversial statements again.

She had to apologize again for the comments she made about the Holocaust. As she was promoting her new movie “Till,” about a young black child who was viciously mur**red by a gang of white men in 1955, she was asked by a reporter about the comments she made on the show.

Earlier this year, Goldberg was suspended from “The View” for claiming the Holocaust was not about race. She apoIogized for the comments but in a new interview with the U.K. paper The Sunday Times, it appears her apology may not have been sincere.

“Remember who they were k!lling first. They were not killing racial; they were k*lling physical. They were k*lling people they considered to be mentally defective. And then they made this decision,” the actress said.

Journalist Janice Turner explained to Goldberg, whose real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson, that there were race laws the Nazis created against Jews and said that “Nazis saw Jews as a race.”

“Yes, but that’s the killer, isn’t it? The oppressor is telling you what you are. Why are you believing them? They’re Nazis. Why believe what they’re saying?” she said.

“It doesn’t change the fact that you could not tell a Jew on a street,” she said. “You could find me. You couIdn’t find them.”

“But you would have thought that I’d taken a big oId stinky dump on the table, butt naked,” she said, in reference to her comments that got her suspended from “The View.”

My best friend said, ‘Not for nothing is there no box on the census for the Jewish race. So that leads me to believe that we’re probably not a race, she said. But on Tuesday, a representative for Goldberg sent a press release that showed the host apologizing for the comments.

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