How journalist Je’Don Holloway-Talley is taking her gift for storytelling from the newspaper to the big screen.

By Nicole S. Daniel | The Modern Standard

What if the greatest storytellers aren’t the ones with the loudest voices, but the ones who pay the closest attention?

Long before her name appeared in the opening credits of a feature film, before she walked the red carpet at the 2026 American Black Film Festival, and before audiences laughed their way through Funny Feelings, Je’Don Holloway-Talley(41) was doing what she’s always done best, watching people.

Not in a casual way, but she studied them.

Talley noticed the questions people avoided answering, the expressions they wore when words weren’t enough, and the tiny details that often revealed the biggest truths. While others hurried through everyday life, Talley found herself fascinated by it. Ordinary conversations felt like scenes from a movie waiting to be written. Family gatherings became character studies. The people around her weren’t simply living life, they were carrying stories.

That curiosity would eventually become the foundation of everything she built.

Today, Talley has earned a reputation as a respected journalist whose work has introduced readers to entrepreneurs, artists, community leaders, and everyday people whose stories deserve to be told. Now she’s stepping into another chapter of her career as a screenwriter, contributing to Funny Feelings, a romantic comedy created by Roderick McClure and Morgan Kokaram and produced by RodFather Productions. Featuring a cast that includes Tristan “Mack” Wilds, Pretty Vee, Pastor Mike McClure Jr., Danielle LaRoach, Terri J. Vaughn and more, the film recently premiered at the American Black Film Festival, marking a milestone she once only imagined.

If you ask Talley how she got here, she won’t begin with Hollywood.