After A Spontaneous Proposal, The Director Of HBO’s ‘The Gilded Age’ Is Engaged To Wed This ‘Queen Sugar’ Star

It’s a Hollywood love story.

Crystle Roberson, writer, producer and director for HBO’s The Gilded Age Season 2, as well as producing director of programs like ABC’s QUEENS and STARZ’s BMF Season 2, is engaged to actor Omar Dorsey of Queen Sugar and Power Book III: Raising Kanan (Season 2) fame. The Georgia natives (who reside in Los Angeles and met at a film festival in Canada) broke the news on Instagram, with Roberson sharing, “I said Yes to a LEGEND and a LEGENDARY LOVE! Cheers to us. I love you!”

Dorsey also shared the good news on his page, writing, “I’m so happy to say she said YES when I just asked her to marry me! Like Jack said in As Good As It Gets You make me want to be a better man! You brought the ‘Hollywood’ out of me Crystle. I love you.”

As Roberson told ESSENCE exclusively, she said yes to a very spontaneous proposal after, unbeknownst to her, Dorsey’s initial plans were thwarted by her work.

It all happened during the first weekend of October. Dorsey had bought an engagement ring for her in Los Angeles and had been carrying it everywhere, including to Atlanta, where he’d traveled to be with his ailing father while Roberson was away filming The Gilded Age in New York.

Upon hearing that she was getting some days off from filming and wanted to fly down to Atlanta to see him, Dorsey decided he would pop the question. He booked a dinner at Roberson’s favorite restaurant in the city, The Consulate, where they’d had their first date. She’d flown into town and wheels were in motion for everything to happen the upcoming Monday. Then they came to a screeching halt.

She was contacted by The Gilded Age producers and told that she would need to return to New York as soon as she could following an emergency that impacted the production schedule. Upon telling Dorsey, he was flabbergasted, which Roberson didn’t understand. Seeing that his moment to ask for her hand in grand fashion at The Consulate was about to slip away, he decided there was no time like the present to make it happen. He went into the closet where he’d hid the ring and returned with a question for Roberson.

As she recalls, he said, “I can’t let you go back to New York without you knowing that I want us to be family and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me, Crystle?” Amid what she calls the extensive tears of an ugly cry, the beauty said yes. The couple have already decided to celebrate their love on New Year’s Eve in Santa Monica, Calif. after partaking in an intimate ceremony this fall.

“I loved everything about the way this proposal happened. Omar is famous and I share him with the world all the time,” she tells ESSENCE. “This was a private moment for us only, no cameras, no other people, just us. It was perfect.” 

As for Dorsey, while things didn’t go as planned, they went exactly as they should in the end. “In retrospect, the moment could not have been more perfect,” he notes. “I’m extremely spontaneous and I love to act quickly on my feet…and I’m so glad I did.”