This vivacious and versatile vixen is a veritable walking entertainment studio. Tonya “T-Bone” Bonique is an actress, model, radio co-host and, most of all, a party promoter who gets things poppin’ in the City of Brotherly Love. Drawing from her deep reservoir of skills and contacts, Bonique tries to mix up the night life of the nation’s fifth-largest city with her own cache of flavors and spices.
“I wanted to create a platform or an event that accommodated [partiers] if they went to Atlanta, Miami or Houston. I was tired of people saying that they couldn’t get that in Philly,” says the multifaceted maven. “So since a lot of people are from a lot of other different places, and would say ‘Hey, T-Bone what’s happening tonight?’ I would have you come to my own event and reap the benefits.”
The self-proclaimed jack-of-all-trades was in pure modeling mode at the Philadelphia International Art Festival at Temple University recently. Modeling, Bonique says, enables her to floss her more feminine side for the self-admitted tomboy. “My dad was listening to a talk radio show and he had been telling me that I should model,” says Bonique, who started at age 13. “I was the biggest tomboy, but I do like to transform. You will see me in ball shorts and a T-shirt, but then I like to switch it up and see the transformation.”
The owner of Bona Fide said the skills she honed back then transferred to acting, and helped her land a role in the film American Gangster with Denzel Washington. “I learned how to network at a young age because people didn’t know how old I was or how young I was. And people would come backstage and say, ‘We want to book you for this, we want to book you for that.’ So I made my own deals early in the game to make me a couple of dollars.”
