Tracee Ellis Ross’s Journey to Self Love, From Girlfriends to Black-ish

So, it was like you're slammed together as sisters,

like these girl groups that don't know each other.

And it was just intense, but we made it out alive

and we are so proud of the work that we did,

but it was a hefty eight years, 173 episodes.

Hi, I am Tracee Ellis Ross and this is SELF

and we're gonna be walking you through

key moments of me through the decades.

[upbeat music]

Funny thing about my life is you can Google things,

because I would not have thought

that I was 12 or 13 in that photograph.

Let me go back to 12 years old.

I was incredibly uncomfortable in my skin.

I had not quite discovered

the comfort of contact lenses yet.

Still had not figured my hair out.

I hadn't started wearing my hair naturally curly at 12.

And I remember Radio City was like a,

it still is Radio City,

but for me, with my mom performing at Radio City,

it was like this big to-do around

interacting with the people that loved my mother.

And I hadn't quite figured out who I was yet,

so that felt like a bit of a daunting adventure.

It took me a long time to discover who I am,

then get comfortable being who I am,

and then have the courage to live as that person.

This was at Chris my stepbrother's birthday party

at our apartment here in New York.

Yeah, I had not figured out my curls yet.

I could chronicle my journey of self-acceptance

through my journey with my hair.

I was matching myself up to a standard of beauty

that did not include me,

that did not include a woman of color,

a Black woman or textured hair.

The truth is for me, at the end of seventh grade,

we moved to Paris.

I used to, before I left for Europe,

we would go to the salon every Saturday

and get our hair done

and then the week would be about

sort of maintaining my hair.

And when I went to Europe, I started running track

and I couldn't go to the salon.

And so, I fried my hair,

'cause all I knew what to do was like put heat on it.

And I used to, it was just.

[Tracee groaning]

I was attempting to find my own identity,

my own sense of beauty, my own sense of self,

and that's when my journey began.

[gentle upbeat music]

College Tracee was, I fell in love.

[Tracee laughing]

I fell in love, I moved in with my boyfriend,

I was studying theater.

I got the acting bug in college.

And I remember thinking, oh, this is it.

Like all of a sudden I felt like

I was experiencing myself out in the world,

like my limbs like started finding what they could do.

And I was like, oh, I've got arms and I've got legs,

and oh my God, my heart can actually,

be used and I have a voice.

And I, oh my God.

And in college I started

to gain a confidence in expressing myself

and what I knew and my point of view.

When I got here in 1995, I was on a model go see

and I went to Mirabella magazine,

and Jade Hobson, who was the creative director,

took me under her wing.

And when I graduated from college, I came in as an intern

and worked as a fashion editor intern at Mirabella Magazine.

And this is me at a show in my fashion editor years.

[gentle upbeat music]

That is the beginning of my womanhood Girlfriends.

It is very hard to put four women together at that age

in that high-pressure cooker situation.

I will say this about Girlfriends.

All four of us were always puzzled,

because Joan, Tony, Maya, and Lynn

treated each other in a way that

none of us in our lives had experienced in friendship.

There was a lot of backstabbing, there was a lot of lying,

there was a lot of secrets,

there was a lot of taking advantage of

in a way that none of us in our lives could liken that too.

There was a lot of pushback from us as a cast all the time

with Mara around like, who treats their friends this way.

Now, don't get me wrong, makes for really good television.

And although the song is, you know,

they're through thick and thin.

I think for me, those years,

and I think for the girls too, like we're close now,

it's not that we weren't close then

we were working in a very intense pressure cooker.

Things that a lot of people don't know.

Our dressing rooms were basically,

closets that had no windows.

We all shared a bathroom and this like common area,

this like little like couch area in the middle.

And so, we were just like on top of each other.

Like it was, it was, there was no privacy.

You couldn't talk on the phone.

So, it was like you're slammed together as sisters,

like these girl groups that don't know each other.

And it was just intense.

But we made it out alive

and we are so proud of the work that we did,

but it was a hefty eight years, 173 episodes.

I think that I became a woman during those years,

but I didn't get a chance to embody that womanhood

until I was out of the show and left the show.

[gentle upbeat music]

I just wanna name that this is probably

one of the worst outfits I've ever worn in my life.

No, no, no. I'm dead serious.

And my friend, Erin, who put this on me,

we laugh about it all the time.

This is the worst, most unflattering, insane outfit.

What is it, and what do I have on?

But like I can't.

Anyway, my thirties were great, but I wouldn't go back.

I'm telling you I wouldn't do twenties,

thirties, or forties again.

I am so happy in my fifties.

I discovered volume in my hair.

I think I discovered a bigger sense of myself.

I gained a different kind of confidence

in my sense of humor.

And five, six, five, six, seven, eight,

cabbage patch, cabbage patch, rolled up.

I started to become a seasoned actress in my thirties.

One of the things I learned, for example,

is when you're doing a show weekly

and we would do 24 episodes a season,

every week, you're doing it, you know what I mean?

And every table read, I would think I was a bad actor,

every table read.

And after about the 10th, 12th, 13th, you're like,

am I a bad actor every week

or is this just part of the process?

And that if I was gonna be an artist

and lead from that place, I needed to get out of my own way

and allow the freedom of being bad at something

in order to discover if I was good at something.

That was what was going on in my thirties.

God, I switched into being a lady,

like an old lady so quickly.

I felt like the whole story of Black-ish

was that Bow and Dre were basically,

being parented by their children.

They were useless parents,

which was the humor and the fun of it.

It was an interesting leap.

It was a scary leap for me not having children.

And at that point in my career,

to all of a sudden be a lady

that was a wife and a mother of five children,

like it just felt, is this the right thing

for me to do in my career?

Tracee Ellis Ross.

Ended up being great,

but it was scary when it first was brought to me,

I was like, I don't know.

I don't know, if that's what is the right next thing.

But it was.

So, you are using white guilt for your college essay?

Yes. Aha. Okay.

I don't act by channeling.

I open up the part of me known as, that's what I say,

the part of me known as Bow.

So, the part of me that is a mother that does mother,

and I respond honestly to things.

It was such a treat.

I mean, I can't call them kids anymore.

They're not kids anymore.

Marsai, Miles, and Yara, and Marcus

are just wonderful human beings.

You know, they always say like,

Don't work with kids or animals,

but that was not our experience.

We laughed all day on that show.

Really interesting time to sort of

shift from being a person discovering who I am

to just being like the matriarch

in my work environment and also in my life.

Just sort of that kind of person.

Like I'm not an activist,

but I very actively use my voice.

And that was sort of the transition

that occurred during those years

that I feel really grateful for.

[gentle upbeat music]

By the time 2019 rolled around, so keep in mind,

Pattern for me was 10 years in the making.

When Girlfriends finished,

I wrote my first haircare brand pitch.

Nobody was interested.

Nobody understood why an actress

would be making hair products.

Nobody understood the difference between hair products

that were for curly, coily,

and tight-textured versus straight.

Like people were just like,

nah, I don't get it, I don't get it.

So I heard all different kinds of nos

and from Girlfriends into Black-ish,

not only was I gaining this larger platform,

but I was learning how to express myself

in a way that was much more effective

for what it is that I was trying to accomplish.

In these years between 2019 and now,

really discovered that I am a business builder.

I know how to do that when it comes to marketing

and the narrative of a business

and how to name and claim what it is the space is,

what the space is that you're occupying,

what the promise is of your brand.

And I feel like I could do it

for more than just Pattern at this point.

It's something that I love

and that intelligence that I discovered at Brown University

has come sort of full fruition.

Now, in my ability to use that intelligence,

both my emotional intelligence,

my creative ability as an artist

combined with my ability to articulate

and be effective in what I want and what I wanna do.

I have loved getting older.

I think the emotional and spiritual aspect

of getting older is delicious.

The physicality, fascinating.

I look forward to having even more ease

with doing what I know works for me

and saying no to things that don't.

It's still sometimes like hard, you know?

I don't trust my instincts.

I trust my instincts.

I don't always follow through on supporting them.

I have to say the beginning bit was a little dicey.

It's kind of hard to go back into the younger feelings,

but really easy to step into where I am now.

I like where I am now

and I liked my little journey down memory lane. Thank you.

[gentle upbeat music]