Taral Hicks landed her breakout role at 16 over competition that included Naomi Campbell. Decades later, her ‘A Bronx Tale’ character still resonates.
ByBernadette Giacomazzo
November 3, 2026
Key Takeaways
- Chazz Palminteri says he and Robert De Niro insisted on casting a Black woman as Jane in A Bronx Tale, rejecting the studio’s preference for a mixed-race actress and giving Taral Hicks her breakout role at 16.
- Palminteri also fought to keep the interracial romance, drawing on his own teenage experience to show how racism shaped Bronx neighborhoods in the 1960s.
- Hicks says her portrayal still resonates with interracial couples and Black girls who saw themselves onscreen: “That’s me. I see me.”
Chazz Palminteri says the studio behind A Bronx Tale wanted an actress who appeared mixed-race to play Jane Williams, but he and director Robert De Niro rejected the idea.
Speaking with Taral Hicks on the 300th episode of The Chazz Palminteri Show, Palminteri recalled insisting that Calogero’s love interest be portrayed by a Black woman—a decision that ultimately gave Hicks her breakout role at 16.
Hicks entered the search after finishing a run in the Harlem musical Mama, I Want to Sing. Her sister spotted an audition notice on the local program Video Music Box, and their mother drove them to a casting call where the line wrapped around the corner.
Hicks kept landing callbacks despite competition that Palminteri said included Robin Givens and Naomi Campbell. “Nobody was better than you,” he told Hicks. “You got the part.”
Released in 1993, A Bronx Tale marked De Niro’s directorial debut and was adapted from Palminteri’s semi-autobiographical one-man play. Set in the Bronx during the 1960s, the film follows Calogero as he is pulled between his working-class father, Lorenzo, and neighborhood crime boss Sonny.
His relationship with Jane, a Black classmate played by Hicks, places the era’s racial hostility inside a coming-of-age story rooted partly in Palminteri’s own youth.
According to Palminteri, the casting choice was deliberate. “The studio wanted a girl who was more mixed,” he said. “And Bob and I were like, ‘No, no. I want a Black woman. She’s not half white, half Black. She’s Black.’”
He explained that Jane was modeled on a girl he fell for at 17 and that the character was essential to showing “how that racism affected those neighborhoods.”
Hicks said seeing a darker-skinned Black teenager centered onscreen carried its own weight: “For little girls everywhere, it was like, ‘That’s me. I see me.’”
The studio’s concerns went beyond casting. Palminteri said executives also wanted to remove the interracial romance entirely, arguing that it slowed the conflict between Calogero’s two father figures and that an Italian teenager would not have dated a Black girl in that neighborhood.
Palminteri pushed back with firsthand experience, while De Niro told him not to entertain the demand.
The storyline remained, as did Sonny’s death—another major plot point Palminteri said the studio wanted changed.
More than three decades later, Hicks said the film still follows her, particularly among interracial couples who saw themselves in Jane and Calogero. Palminteri similarly recalled fans approaching him with introductions such as “She’s my Jane” or “He’s my Calogero.”
