After college, I shot a pilot for a show on Lifetime, which was basically House of Style for a TV lover. I think I got paid $1,500, and I was like, “Mom, I’m moving out! I made it!” I did two seasons of that, but I felt like a talking head and wanted to do more.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSI was spoiled when I worked in the magazine world. Fashion closets are heaven and I seem to model my organization after a fashion closet.
More Tracee Ellis Ross Quotes
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I’ve always been a curious thinker. And now, as an adult, I can articulate it.
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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.
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I’m trying to find my own version of what makes me feel beautiful.
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When you feel happy, you look beautiful.
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My mom helped me. I was very shy growing up, but my shyness sort of manifested in a big personality.
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I like to choose compassion over judgment and curiosity over fear.
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My generation is one of the first generations of “choiceful” women – women who have actually had the choice of how they architect their lives – and I don’t think shame should have any place in that. But as that generation, you get cuts and bruises.
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There are a ton of foods that are great for you, that’s like an indulgence.
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Sometimes 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?
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In some of the darkest and hardest moments, there is always a part of me that is okay. And I can always access that part of me.
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The clothing, the makeup, the freedom of expression in [the models’] bodies. It was Linda and Christy and Naomi at the time. So I modeled before college.
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Wisdom means to choose now what will make sense later.
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It was when I realized I needed to stop trying to be somebody else and be myself, that I actually started to own, accept and love what I had.
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I’m a farmer’s market girl, so if you go and get beautiful, fresh fruit, that’s local, and it hasn’t been frozen yet, it’s pretty fantastic.
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I think our culture promotes fear and shame.
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And it acting was exciting to me. And scary.
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[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.
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Black-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.
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Throughout high school, I was obsessed with magazines. I used to just comb through them and plaster things on my wall.
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It 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.
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The 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.
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My mom didn’t adhere to any of those typical rules. She woke us up for school every morning, and was there at dinner or would call at bedtime. She never left for longer than a week. She recorded while we were sleeping.
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My mom would leave her job, and there would be throngs of people screaming and banging on our car. I come from a very private family, but I was born into a public family.
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I sometimes think to myself, you’re not going to meet a new friend of any kind at home in front of the TV with your DVR. As much as it’s great, and there are so many good shows on TV, and I have great books that I’m reading, get out and interact with people.
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Sometime 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.
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Someone asked me recently, “Do you get sick of people asking you about your hair?” And the reason I don’t is because I actually feel like you could chronicle my journey of self-acceptance through my journey with my hair. It’s a badge of something bigger.
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