Beauty in Black built its entire identity around characters who make terrible decisions and somehow keep getting away with them. The Netflix show has no shortage of characters who make terrible decisions, manipulate the people around them, and leave chaos in their wake. Created by Tyler Perry, the show follows Kimmie as she becomes entangled with the powerful Bellarie family, whose beauty empire hides a much darker operation involving greed, exploitation, secrets, and an underground trafficking network.
This makes ranking the characters audiences have come to love to hate a complicated task. While some are outright villains, others have enough redeeming qualities to make audiences conflicted about rooting for them. The series has topped Netflix’s charts across three seasons precisely because its villains are so gleefully awful to watch. With the show renewed for a fourth season, here’s a ranking of the worst characters in Beauty in Black, considering their actions, willingness to hurt others, and how much chaos they have created.
10. Angel
While Angel (Xavier Smalls) might not be the worst person in Beauty in Black, his willingness to play both sides makes him easy to distrust. He begins as one of Kimmie (Taylor Polidore Williams) and Rain’s longtime friends from the club and eventually gets pulled into the Bellarie family’s orbit after connecting with Horace.
Angel spends much of the series trying to survive in an environment where loyalty can be dangerous. Although his connection to Horace gives him access to a more luxurious life, it also forces him to decide how much of himself he is willing to sacrifice to keep that position. Season 3 makes that conflict even more obvious as he struggles with the expectations that come with Horace’s favor.
9. Charles
Charles (Steven G. Norfleet) is one of the more complicated members of the Bellarie family because his problems do not excuse his actions. As Horace and Olivia’s son, he struggles with addiction, family pressure, and his father’s contempt. However, he also becomes capable of increasingly disturbing behavior. Season 2 pushes Charles into particularly dark territory.
After committing a violent act, he turns to his mother for help cleaning up the aftermath, and Olivia’s reaction shows just how normalized criminal behavior has become within the family. His situation becomes even more complicated in Season 3 as he faces the consequences of his choices and considers whether he can break away from the patterns that have defined the Bellaries. While the conflict makes Charles more than a simple villain, it does not make his actions easier to overlook.
8. Rain
Rain (Amber Reign Smith) begins the show as Kimmie’s ride-or-die best friend from the club, which makes her later choices sting even more. She survives a botched cosmetic procedure early in the series, then spends later seasons drifting between genuine loyalty and self-serving schemes. Her lowest point comes when she seems willing to let harm come to Kimmie’s sister to solve her own problems, a moment that quickly turns a lot of viewer goodwill into frustration.
7. Mallory
Mallory (Crystle Stewart) is one of the hardest characters to place because she can be both sympathetic and ruthless. She married into the Bellarie family without their wealth, then built her reputation as the public face of the Beauty in Black brand, gaining considerable influence within the family. Her intelligence and ambition make her one of the show’s most compelling characters, but those qualities also push her into morally questionable territory.
Mallory rarely gives up power willingly, and her conflicts with Kimmie become increasingly complicated as both women recognize what the other brings to the table. By the end of Season 2, Mallory becomes Kimmie’s unlikely ally after spending much of the series as her rival. Season 3 then shows that Mallory remains willing to make difficult choices to protect her position, even when those choices come with serious consequences.
6. Roy
Roy (Julian Horton) has all the trappings of an easy life and still manages to sabotage it at every turn. As the younger of Horace and Olivia’s two sons, he was raised under the Bellarie name, with money and status handed to him before he ever had to earn either. His upbringing left him with a sense of entitlement that seeps into his marriage to Mallory, where his repeated cheating slowly wears down whatever patience she has left for him.
His behavior becomes so difficult for Mallory to tolerate that she begins taking matters into her own hands, while his personal problems continue to collide with the family’s larger power struggle. By Season 3, Roy’s problems spiral out of control. A worsening drug habit and mounting legal exposure catch up with him at the same time he’s grappling with a harder truth. This leaves him facing consequences that his money and surname can no longer easily solve.
5. Horace
Horace (Ricco Ross) built the Beauty in Black brand and sits at the center of the Bellarie family’s power structure. His position gives him enormous influence over his children, his former wife, and everyone else who depends on the family business. He also has a habit of treating people as pieces on a chessboard. His decision to marry Kimmie from his hospital bed after learning his cancer was terminal completely changes the family’s power structure because he intends for her to inherit his fortune and control of the business.
Yet, Horace is not simply another rich villain. His resentment toward his entitled sons, his distrust of Norman, and his complicated relationship with Kimmie give him motivations that sometimes make sense even when his methods are ruthless. However, by Season 3, he’s still willing to double down on those methods when his empire comes under attack.
4. Olivia
Olivia (Debbi Morgan) may not control the Bellarie empire anymore, but she still thinks she’s its matriarch. Horace’s ex-wife remains deeply invested in the family’s power and repeatedly shows she’ll protect her interests and her children by almost any means necessary, and her relationship with Charles shows just how far that loyalty extends. Season 3 opens with that loyalty catching up to her: an FBI raid lands her in handcuffs alongside Roy, Charles, and Norman after Horace turns state’s evidence against the family. Even with her power diminished and an arrest record to show for it, Olivia refuses to see herself as a victim.
3. Jules
Jules (Charles Malik Whitfield) spends most of the series as the Bellaries’ longtime head of security and fixer, a former police officer who knows every secret the family has buried. His loyalty collapses in Season 3 after his son Glen dies in a fall at the Bellarie property. Jules escapes FBI custody, tricks agents into believing he’ll cooperate, and tracks down Sylvie, who has been hiding since Season 2. When Sylvie finally admits that Rain caused Glen’s fall while trying to protect her, Jules shoots her dead on the spot, even though she bears no responsibility for what happened.
The killing marks the turn. From there, Jules reveals himself as the hidden boss behind Gina and her criminal network, and he uses that connection to launch a bloody attack on Make It Rain that leaves Kimmie, Mallory, and others fighting for their lives. Unsurprisingly, fans love to hate Jules because his revenge stops looking like grief almost immediately and starts looking like something closer to a purge.
2. Norman
Norman (Richard Lawson) co-founded Beauty in Black with his brother Horace, where he originally served as the chemist behind its hair relaxer line before a defective formula tied to cancer cases pushed him out of the business. The fallout curdled into a long-running power struggle between the two brothers, one that only escalates as the series goes on. Rather than chase the spotlight, Norman built a second, darker source of power. He runs a trafficking operation alongside Jules and has a habit of using blackmail and quiet threats to keep the rest of the family in line.
What makes Norman one of the more consistently unsettling characters in the cast is his restraint. He rarely raises his voice or resorts to the theatrics other Bellaries lean on, working instead through boardrooms, leverage, and calculated moves. Even after the Season 2 FBI raid lands most of the family in custody, Norman is the one who manages to use his connections to walk free, immediately looking for his next move while everyone else scrambles.
1. Body
Body (Tamera “Tee” Kissen) served as Kimmie’s fiercest rival at the club and one of Delinda’s most trusted enforcers. She pressures the other dancers into risky cosmetic procedures, treats Kimmie’s rise as a personal threat, and crosses a final line by helping traffic Kimmie’s teenage sister. This decision sets up one of the show’s most talked-about confrontations and cements Body as a character audiences loved to watch lose.
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