'WKRP In Cincinnati' Star Tim Reid Honored At 2025 Virginia Black Film Festival

While a student at Norfolk State University in 1968 in Virginia, actor and director Tim Reid recalls being approached by professor Stanley Wilson who cast him in a school production.

After that stage experience, Reid went on to make a name for himself in Hollywood as Venus Flytrap in the popular CBS sitcom ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’ along with his wife Daphne Reid and actress Loni Anderson who convinced him to get one of his ears pierced.

“Because of Loni, I got a diamond in my ear,” Reid joked. “It wasn’t that I was trying to be cool although I liked it. It was making a statement. I wore it to show defiance.”

Reid, 80, made the comments at the 2nd Annual Virginia Black Film Festival (VBFF) in Hampton, Virginia where he received a Lifetime Achievement Award on June 22.

Other honorees were Hollywood film actor Clifton Powell, Hampton Mayor Jimmy Gray and former Verizon president BK Fulton along with Fatima-Cortez Todd who is the widow of the late Tony Todd, a classically trained actor known for starring in ‘Platoon’ and ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation.’

‘WKRP in Cincinnati’ aired from 1978 to 1982 and won a Primetime Emmy in 1981.

"Loni said I should grow a beard,” Reid said of his then co-star Loni Anderson. “There were no black men in regular roles at that time with beards because we looked too threatening.”

“I wrote three scripts for ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’ and Hugh let me produce, which meant going through the entire process of color timing, sound balancing and all that,” Reid added. “I delivered them to the network to be aired. So, I'm a good producer because I practiced it."

The festival was founded by Bryan G. Thompson in partnership with the City of Hampton where screenings took place at both the American Theatre and in the student center of Hampton University, a historically black college that is private.

Some 56 independent feature and short films were screened over the course of the Juneteenth holiday weekend from June 19 through June 22.

"Hampton has a great history and we have many event venues," said Mayor Gray at the festival’s closing night Awards Gala on Sunday June 22. "The location of our city makes it a great place to have an event like this."

Hampton is the site of numerous significant historical events, including the unveiling of the Emancipation Proclamation, which ordered that African-American slaves be free in 1863, as well as the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War.

List of 2025 VBFF winning films and screenplays.