Actress's Bold Move Appears to Pay Off

Actress Racquel Bailey of New Jersey generated some buzz last summer when she put her face on billboards outside Tyler Perry's studio in Atlanta. "Attention Mr. Perry," she wrote, as she announced herself as his "next leading lady." At the time, Perry didn't seem appreciative, tweeting that actors should save their money because "this is not the way to get my attention," reports CNN. But months later, the 33-year-old will indeed appear in Perry's BET show Sistas. She plays a cop making an arrest (you can see her in this preview), though it was unclear whether the role would be recurring.

"I wasn't looked at as the billboard girl—I was looked at as an actress," she told CNN about her audition. Last year, Bailey explained that she got the inspiration for the $2,000 billboard gesture from actress Dorothy Dandridge, who pulled a similar stunt in her day, per the Atlanta Journal Constitution. For the record, when Perry initially responded to Bailey's move, he noted that he already had seen and appreciated her work in the HBO series The Night Of. (More Tyler Perry stories.)