Photo credit: Courtesy of Jehan Carter
“I’m taking over the world and I suggest you follow,” exclaims J. Carter in the trailer for Pollywood Nights. She’s a lawyer, a producer, a Washingtonian and blends all three into a stab at a Washington reality show, hoping to succeed where others have failed.
“I’m still a practicing attorney, but I actually went from being a practicing attorney to a producer. I’ve always been very creative. I’ve done pageants, I’ve danced, I’ve modeled in New York. I’ve always been creative, but I also knew I wanted to go to law school,” she told Hollywood on the Potomac.
“It’s kind of running parallel now,” she explained. “When I graduated from law school, it was right in the middle of the big Wall Street recession so it was like, okay, I can’t stay in New York where there’s no employment opportunities because of the recession. I said, you know what? I’m from DC. My family and friends are there. I’ll go back to DC. So I came back and I started to practice law, but it was slow. I said, I’ll use this down time to pursue my producer efforts.” And so she did.
Growing up, Carter was always told she would one day have to choose between her legal and arts passion but she has proven she can exist in both worlds. She balances her law practice, The Carter Law Group, alongside her legal entertainment blog, Pollywoodspotlight.com. 
“The original piece I produced was a film about President Obama and his Hollywood influence in DC. It was a documentary entitled Pollywood. The show Pollywood Nights is a spin off. Because people liked the documentary, I wanted to further explore entertainment. Usually when you think of a show about DC – Scandal, House of Cards, 1500 Penn, Homeland – they’re still serious. They’re still showing the political, government, lawyer aspect of DC that everybody already knows. I wanted to show a different side of Washington. I really wanted to play up the fact that we do have a social scene here. We have an entertainment scene here, we have a media scene here. The show is really a spin off of the film, but it goes beyond just President Obama being a celebrity and his influence in DC; it shows real people that actually live here during the time that he’s (President Obama) here and during this time that we had this explosion of celebrity and entertainment. With Pollywood Nights you have a radio deejay, you have an international star, you have a magician/entertainer and you have myself who’s an entertainment attorney, but you have to remember, it’s on the backdrop of President Obama.”
“Just last week we had the BET Honors with Kim and Kanye West and Usher and Neo and Wayne Brady, so our town over the last eight years has just seen this explosion of celebrity and Hollywood and it’s really becoming the “it” place to live. I love my town. This is a very transient town, but since I’m from here, I’ve seen the transformation. We party during the week like in New York. Our restaurants have seen a boom. Outside of just the club and restaurant scene, we’ve seen a boom in our non-profits, specifically Becky’s Fund and the Tiger Lily Foundation.
“There has been a shift and my show shows that shift,” she explained. “Legally Fabulous is a second show that I put together at the end of last year as a pilot, again capturing people that live in the Obama era in Washington, but I want it to follow female attorneys, because I’m a female attorney. The twist on that is all the attorneys do something else. I have a former Miss D.C., Chelsey Rogers who’s a singer and socialite. I have a fashionista, fashion blogger attorney and then I have another attorney who is an event planner and event design person. We all have these creative outlets, we’re also socialites, but we’re attorneys by day. My goal was to create two shows showing two very different views in terms of types of people in D.C. Then also again that this character could be Washington, DC – Washington is actually the fifth character to each of the shows.”
“My hope is to do both shows, Legally Fabulous and Pollywood Nights,” she concluded. “The pilot is premiering in three parts beginning February 1 through February 15th, so every Sunday you can watch a part of the pilot for both shows. My hope is that we get great feedback that I can take them into my network meetings and get a couple of networks interested. That’s really the next step. The first step was just to present the pilots and test them with the audience. We’re excited that people are already buzzing about the pilot. The next step is to get a green light.”
Pollywood Nights Trailer:
Legally Fabulous Trailer:
