Adult friendships don’t just shape who we are — they often save us.
That truth sits at the heart of Lifetime’s new film, “He Wasn’t Man Enough,” inspired by Toni Braxton’s hit song of the same name and starring the R&B icon alongside Essence Atkins and Yvette Nicole Brown.
“I love how this script kind of expounded on [the song],” Atkins, 53, told TheGrio during an interview ahead of the film’s release. “I really love how it was brought to a story and made this great film about coming back around and recognizing what really matters. And in this particular instance, it is us. It is the friendship.”
The film follows three women based in Atlanta — Successful writer Mel (Braxton), Monica (Atkins), and Candy (Brown) — whose once-solid friendship fractured years ago after life, love, and a complicated breakup pushed them apart. The story drops them back into each other’s orbit when a new situation forces the trio to revisit old wounds and finally face what pulled them away from one another. For Atkins and Brown, bringing that dynamic to life was both natural and joyful — especially since they got to work together as real-life friends while also meeting Braxton for the first time.
“It was like playing with your friends for three or four weeks,” Brown, 54, said, who added how Braxton was a delight to work with.
Together, the actresses hope the movie reminds viewers of the essential — and complicated — nature of adult friendships, something both women have had plenty of personal experience with. Atkins noted how, up until this point, her female friends have been the real “epic love story” of her life.
“They’ve been so paramount for me in my growth, in my grief, in my joy, in my celebrations,” she expressed
Brown agreed, adding how her own community has held her together through major life moments.
“My sister friends were the ones that really held me up and kept me together, especially moving to LA and not really having anybody,” she explained. “I built a wonderful village of good girlfriends.”
According to the actresses, sisterhood isn’t just about showing up when life is easy — it’s about choosing each other again when things get messy, uncomfortable, or painful to confront. It’s also about finding ways to transcend life’s changes.
Brown, who recently tied the knot, shared that many of her friends expected never to see her again now that she was finally a wife.
“Women will meet the guy and then toss the girls that were ‘the Bridge Over Troubled Water’ aside,” she said. “We have to honor those relationships and build a bridge when something goes terribly wrong.”
Meanwhile, Atkins noted how her friendship with a recently engaged friend had to change slightly to remain.
“In honor of that, I have taken a bit of a step back to allow for him to be the first phone call,” she admitted. “Because I don’t want him to feel as if this village around her — because she’s got a huge, huge village of women who love and adore her — that he would have to penetrate it, as opposed to us deciding to make room to bring them in.”
In the end, these nuances and so much are what drive the plot of the film that sees the women struggling to reconnect as different men revolve around them.
“It’s a very fun and funny glimpse,” Atkins said. “But I feel like at its core, it’s a very real peek into what it’s like to really have a great sisterhood and the realities of that, because you’re going to go through things because we’re human, and we’re going to hurt each other, even not meaning to sometimes.”
“He Wasn’t Man Enough” premieres Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025, at 8/7c on Lifetime.
