Deloris Wise

Delores Wise is Korey's mother, a woman already worn thin by hardship when the police come for her son in the middle of a citywide panic. She loves him fiercely but imperfectly, distracted by her own struggles, and finds herself unprepared for what the system is about to do to her family.

Niecy Nash plays her without asking for sympathy or judgment, letting the contradictions sit uncomfortably together — neglect and devotion, weakness and love. The performance never explains her away; it lets a real, flawed mother exist inside a story about how easily innocent families get crushed by institutions that were never built to see them clearly.