Living Single gave us something real: friendship that felt like home, wit that cut deep, and characters who looked and lived like us—long before the culture had language to celebrate it. Before Black millennial shorthand even existed, there was Maxine Shaw, Attorney at Law—fiercely ambitious, sarcastic, soft in all the right places—and unapologetically Black.
Now, nearly 30 years later, Erika Alexander and Kim Coles are opening the door back up with their podcast ReLiving Single. But this isn’t just a nostalgic stroll down memory lane. It’s a space for truth-telling, healing, and honoring the behind-the-scenes silences that shaped their legacy.
In an exclusive clip from this Wednesday’s new episode, Alexander sits with her former co-star TC Carson—better known to fans as the smooth-talking, tender-hearted Kyle Barker—and offers something rarely captured on mic: a moment of unscripted, emotional reconciliation.
“You were my comedy partner,” Alexander said, with tears in her eyes. “And so, doing things without you, was weird.”
Carson has long spoken out about the industry politics that hastened his departure. He was let go after publicly calling out Warner Bros. for sidelining Living Single while heavily prioritizing Friends. Though both shows were produced by Warner Bros. only one was treated as a cultural investment. “We were getting less all around,” Carson said in an interview with HYPE. “And then they created Friends and gave them everything. Both shows were Warner Bros. shows on Warner Bros. lots. So to watch that, to be on our lot and to watch that, was really kind of a slap in the face.”
For Alexander, Carson was more than a co-star—he was an anchor. Without him, she had to reorient herself in real time, while keeping up the façade of fierce, unshakable Maxine Shaw. “I actually didn’t even know how to be Max without you,” she said, still emotional. “It was like somebody ripped your soul out and then said, ‘Go.’”
Alexander’s admission is an acknowledgment that the self is shaped by those who see us most clearly. Max, in all her Black feminist brilliance, could not exist in a vacuum. She needed someone to bounce off of, to challenge, to love. Carson, as Kyle, was that someone.
The dynamic the two built wasn’t born in the writers’ room—it was built between takes, crafted in eye contact, shaped by mutual trust, and hardened under the pressures of being Black artists asked to do twice as much for half the credit.
Wednesday’s episode of ReLiving Single is cultural recovery. It’s a reclamation of legacy, a reckoning with the silence behind the laughter, and a tribute to the emotional labor it took to create joy while being made invisible.
And for one powerful moment, Max and Kyle are in the same room again. Not on a sitcom set, but in truth, in memory, in love.
New episodes of “ReLiving Single” air weekly on Wednesdays on the “ReLiving Single” YouTube channel, and wherever you get your podcasts. Watch the exclusive clip below.