Sperm Stealing MaryJane

In an upcoming episode of BET's Being Mary Jane, the titular character, Mary Jane Paul, finally tells her friends that after having sex with an old lover, she used a turkey baster to remove his sperm from a condom and stored it in her freezer. When Paul initially stole the sperm, it caused an outcry on Twitter from viewers. Still, creator Mara Brock Akil tells ABC News Radio she included the plot line to spur a discussion.

"Just because I'm not doing it and you're not doing, it doesn't mean it's not being done," the 43-year-old writer and executive producer says. "And let's talk about why it's being done. ...The journalist in me wants to know why." 

Brock Akil says she was inspired to write the storyline about Gabrielle Union's character snatching her ex-lover's sperm after seeing news articles and lawsuits about the very same scenario. And this isn't the first time Brock Akil has included a woman stealing a man's sperm in her TV shows. In a 2007 episode of her BET series, The Game, a show centered on a fictional football team, fictional wide receiver Derwin Davis' new girlfriend tried to get pregnant by stealing his sperm through a turkey baster too.

"When we were on The Game I heard a story where there were a group of women who hired a doctor -- those are quotes around the doctor -- and they put him up in a hotel room, the same hotel where they were having sex with different ball players and they were running down the [hall] to get inseminated," Brock Akil explains. "And I was like, 'This is forreal? Like, no! No one's doing this.' And they were like, 'Okay. Don't believe me.'"

Brock Akil is determined to showcase and write a character that is complex for her hit BET show. She describes Mary Jane Paul as an "American woman," who may appear to have it together professionally as a news anchor for a fictional cable network, but in her personal life -- her friends, family and relationships -- she's struggling to tread water.

"TV writes a lot about single people, but you rarely see them alone. And so I thought I wanted to explore that. And I also thought it was fun to get into the minutia of what that is and see what that humanity looks like versus what we're projecting out to our friends and family and coworkers," Brock Akil says.


Sperm Stealing Source