In this film, Angela Bassett plays a preacher's wife. In 1996, her Waiting to Exhale (1995) co-star Whitney Houston played the title role in The Preacher's Wife (1996). The preacher in that film was played by Courtney B. Vance, Bassett's real-life husband.
Although this is the first film in which Angela Bassett and Forest Whitaker have acted together, Whitaker had previously directed Bassett in Waiting to Exhale (1995). Bassett and Whitaker would both go on to appear in Black Panther (2018)