American actress, model, and activist, Yara Shahidi, graces the latest cover of Essence magazine and she talks about her role on her latest TV show titled “Grown-ish”. The 19-year-old future Harvard student also talk about being young with writer Zeba Blay for Essence’s April 2018 issue.
Read excerpts from the interview below:
Being a teenage activist: When you are in the public eye as a person of colour, you are given very little room to mess up. [It means] letting the culture down. I feel comfortable putting my political stances out there without feeling as though I am filling some sort of quota, I don’t have a wokeness quota for the day.
Balancing Hollywood and regular life: I’ve always struggled with Hollywood feeling trivial. Red carpets aren’t worth it. As fun as it is to get dressed up, it is surreal to be sitting at the Teen Choice Awards while [something like] Charlottesville is happening.
Handling twitter comments: Quite honestly, I’m the kind of person to get my feelings hurt over something somebody said on Twitter. There are those moments when I can go through 10 million amazing comments that are super supportive, and one person may say something and I’ll stew over it. That’s something that I’ve actively had to work on.
Photo Credit: Essence Magazine
