Late Actress Diahann Carroll’s Successful Career Was What ‘the World Needed’: ‘Upheld Her Legacy’

When Diahann Carroll received the call in the 1980s asking her to join the cast of Dynasty, she had one condition. “I didn’t want to be on the show unless I could be bitchy,” Diahann said. “The first Black bitch on television!” 

The life of Diahann included many more momentous firsts, too. The star, reared in Harlem, New York, was the first African American woman to win a Tony Award. On Julia, Diahann starred as the first Black professional woman at the center of a TV series. “It took a while for me to understand how important what I did was,” Diahann told Closer in 2017. “I am very proud of it.” 

A WILL OF STEEL

Her family didn’t have money, but Diahann’s mother taught her to believe in herself from a very young age. “My mom said, ‘You are special. If you work a bit, you could be president,’” recalled Diahann, who began taking voice and piano lessons as a small child. “I knew what my mom was doing: getting me out of the neighborhood.”

As a teenager, the beautiful young woman found work as a model. Her first big break occurred in 1954 when Diahann took home the top prize singing on the TV talent competition Chance of a Lifetime. “It was really a fairy tale — and also a shock!” Diahann said of her six-decade career that included television, film, nightclubs and Broadway. In 1962, Diahann won a Tony for her role in the musical No Strings. A few years later, she was starring on TV’s Julia. “She said the world needed to see this nurse who was raising her son by herself and was successful at it,” Kwakiutl Dreher, author of Dancing on the White Page: Black Women Entertainers Writing Autobiography, tells Closer. 

Like so many famous women, Diahann struggled in her home life. She was divorced three times and lost another husband – one that enjoyed her wealth a little too much – in a car accident. Diahann also had long relationships with Sidney Poitier and broadcaster David Frost. “I think I could have been a good wife at some point, but obviously I didn’t need that as much as I need my work,” she said. 

She regretted more the times she missed with her daughter, Suzanne, but Diahann remained proud of the financial security she gave her only child. She called becoming a grandmother of two her “second chance” at family life. “It’s made me more religious than ever,” she said. “Being in their presence for a couple of days, I feel as if I’ve been lifted.”

Before she died in 2019 at age 83, Diahann did her best to raise all women. “Diahann Carroll was a star in the old-school way,” says Dreher. “Despite everything she went through, she always handled herself with grace and poise. She upheld her legacy.”