I’m extremely blessed to have the extraordinary mother that I have, and I don’t mean Diana Ross, I mean the mother. My mom paved a road that didn’t exist, as did Oprah.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSI’m extremely blessed to have the extraordinary mother that I have, and I don’t mean Diana Ross, I mean the mother. My mom paved a road that didn’t exist, as did Oprah.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS[Black-ish creator] Kenya Bariss wrote on Girlfriends. We’ve been friendly since then. He sent me [the pilot] and said, “I wrote it for you.” But I know what that means in this industry.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSWisdom means to choose now what will make sense later.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSHere is my wish and my desire and my pledge as well: that we remember our true nature and our womanhood. That we own and know that we are more than our bodies and yet our bodies are these sacred, beautiful, rhythmic houses for us.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSIt would drive the photographers crazy because I would giggle and tell jokes. I was gregarious, and looking back, I realize I had a captive audience.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSThe two things that I thought were really interesting about this character [Bow] for me were that she actually loved her husband, and he loved her. The comedy was not coming from the fact that they hated each other. Which is what television couples are usually based on.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSI’m a really big believer in self care. One of the ways I nourish my soul is I eat the way I live my life – joyfully.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSIf I’m going to show cleavage or chest then I don’t show leg. I show one thing. If I show leg then everything else is covered up.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSSometime in my second year at Brown [University], I took an acting class. And the lightbulb went off for me. I fell in love with it. I realized that everything I was afraid of about myself, all my fears, could be used in that world.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSBlack-ish is really a show about an American family and these are some of the topics that come up – for all of us, in different ways – and we get to see how this family is walking through it.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSDifferences in experience, points of view and opinions aren’t what pulls us apart. It’s what pulls us together.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSMy bathroom is filled with hair and makeup stuff and I play with it all the time. What the real lesson is, is that you can own your own sense of beauty. It doesn’t have to be something you get from somewhere else.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSSometimes I feel like art is supposed to mirror life, but strangely it’s as if art is trying to catch up to life, to a certain extent?
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSI have to take some time to dream some new dreams. I feel like there’s a treasure hunt in front of me. A treasure hunt that is speckled with and seeded by a deep-rooted wild freedom.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSI think television is doing a better job than films in terms of representing people, but television is still not diverse.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSThere is a way to be a woman, ask for what we deserve and be able to negotiate.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS