Despite racial inequity, Hollywood is brimming with melanin magic makers who bring raw talent to the big and small screen. With that in mind, we’d be remiss not to celebrate these luminaries this Women’s History Month.
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A true thespian can do it all; invoke emotions of grief and sadness with soul-stirring performances, put audiences at ease with relatable portrayals, and give watchers moments of respite with laughs as they navigate an often callous world.
Bubbling Black Actresses do all of the aforementioned even while facing obstacles as double minorities. Most recently those issues were brought to the forefront by Taraji P. Henson who reveled in the opportunity to portray Shug Avery in The Color Purple but refused to remain silent on Hollywood’s inclusion issues.
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In particular, the issue of pay disparity weighed on the actress’ spirit as she opined about Tinseltown’s affinity for underpaying and undervaluing Black women and admitted she once considered quitting.
“I’m just tired of working so hard, being gracious at what I do, getting paid a fraction of the cost,” Henson said in a SiriusXM with Gayle King. “I’m tired of hearing my sisters say the same thing over and over. You get tired. I hear people go, ‘You work a lot.’ I have to. The math ain’t mathing.”
“It seems every time I do something and break another glass ceiling, when it’s time to renegotiate, I’m at the bottom again, like I never did what I just did, and I’m tired,” she added.
She later doubled down on her words at the NAACP Image Awards after host Queen Latifah thanked her for “standing up for all of us.”
“It’s a scary thing to speak your truth but I urge you all to speak your truth because at the end of the day, that’s all we have,” she said while accepting her Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress. “And like they say, ‘the truth will set you free.’ And not only that, it will set somebody else free.”
As Taraji continues her truth-telling about fellow Black actresses, BOSSIP is shining a spotlight on her sistas in cinema blowing us away with their God-given gifts.
Last year, we highlighted sizzlers like Lauren Lott, Danielle Deadwyler, and Halle Bailey, this year, we’re adding more ladies to our list.
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Lights, camera, action!
In no particular order, here’s BOSSIP’s Bubbling Black Actresses of 2024.
Thespian Taylor Russell Has What It Takes To Become A Household Name
Taylor Russell McKenzie (pka Taylor Russell) is a name you need to familiarize yourself with ASAP.
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The Vancouver, Canada native is both an actress and a director and we believe that she will become a force to be reckoned with as her career continues to develop. At the age of 29, she’s already delivered several distinct performances that show her range and ability to transform on screen.
Take, for example, the 2022 film Bones And All, where Taylor plays a teenage girl named Maren Yearly alongside Dune star Timotheé Chalamet, who plays a young man named Lee, as a pair of love-struck cannibals, yes cannibals, trekking across the United States looking to reconcile their traumatic pasts. Not only is the blood-curdling script a subversive take on romance and horror but Russell puts on a full display of her talents as thespian.
As an auteur, Taylor Russell also has the eye for emotional depth and the heart for humanity that is required to tell stories like The Heart Still Hums, a documentary that she wrote and directed with her co-creative Savannah Leaf. The film chronicles the difficult life of five women who struggle with traumas like drug addiction, homelessness, and parental neglect while showing uninterrupted and unconditional motherly love to their young children.
Outside of her talents on screen and behind the camera, Taylor Russell serves look and gives runway with the best of them. Let’s be clear, there is a very good reason why VOGUE Italia, Loewe, and Variety want her front and center on their covers and campaigns. Just…look at her.
Like…
C’mon now…
Beyond all the aforementioned attributes and adjectives, Taylor Russell McKenzie is a person and her life experiences are more than glamour and glitz. She is the product of a biracial relationship between her white mother and Jamaican father. Some might be inclined to think that growing up in Canada would somehow shield her from the harmful isms that are associated with those walking in both worlds. Please do not drink that Kool-Aid.
During a 2018 interview with The Grio Taylor explained:
“I grew up in Vancouver which is beautiful but very Caucasian. When I moved to Toronto there were a lot more Black and mixed people. I have always had people who wanted to touch my hair and Black girls not accepting me because I’m too light-skinned to fit in with them and white girls who rejected me because I was different than them too,” said Russell.
“A lot of identity issues come from that and I dealt with identity issues growing up because I didn’t grow up with my dad’s side of the family.
We have no idea what Taylor Russell has coming up but we’ll definitely be watching.
–Jason Lee
‘The Bear’s’ Breakout Star Ayo Edebiri Can’t Be Stopped
2024 has only just begun and Ayo Edebiri is already having a blockbuster year.
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Edebiri was raised an only child in Dorchester, Massachusetts by a mother who immigrated from Barbados and a father who immigrated from Nigeria. Both had high expectations for their daughter, which is a big reason why she felt a lot of pressure growing up.
“I didn’t identify as funny, I identified as stressed,” she told Vogue of her childhood.
Comedian, actor, fashion darling…and soon-to-be-director? How Ayo Edebiri became Hollywood’s most beloved new star https://t.co/4lr2ZuvaM3 pic.twitter.com/cfpadR62jG
— Vogue Magazine (@voguemagazine) March 25, 2024
In eighth grade, she recognized just how easily she could use humor as a tool, which is when she became interested in doing stand-up comedy.
“I was like, I like how this feels!” she said of embracing comedy. “I also feel like it means that I understand people, like I understand what they want.”
Ayo went to college at New York University, where she eventually switched her major from something more practical–teaching–to dramatic writing, which ultimately led to her writing gigs on shows like What We Do in the Shadows, Dickinson, and Big Mouth.
She later transitioned from the writers’ room to being in front of the camera, landing her breakout role as Chef Sydney in The Bear in 2022. She’s set to make her debut as a director this spring on an episode of season three.
“I think you’d be a sociopath if you were to say, “Absolutely”,’ she told ELLE when asked if she expected The Bear to be such a runaway success. “I think we all had positive feelings while we were making the show and there was something very cathartic about the process. I wanted to work with everybody again because the scripts felt good [to read]and working with these people feels good. But you never know how people are seeing things.”
After audiences fell in love with Edebiri on the comedy-drama series, she was everywhere in 2023, starring in Bottoms with her NYU classmate Rachel Sennott and landing guest spots on Black Mirror and Abbott Elementary.
She kicked off this year with a bang by winning Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes and hosting an episode of Saturday Night Live. Despite her already-busy filming schedule, she’s set to appear in films including A24 indie horror Opus with John Malkovich and Omni Loop with Mary-Louise Parker later this year.
–Rebecah Jacobs
Diarra Kilpatrick’s Quick Wit & Comedic Chops Make Mystery ‘Oh So Alluring
A Motor City native is making waves with a series that highlights her hometown as well as her wit, skill, and comedic chops.
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Diarra Kilpatrick is one to watch.
The actress/writer/producer is far from a newbie on the Hollywood scene but now she’s front and center right where she belongs. The multihyphenate who studied drama at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts has starred in Perry Mason, The Last OG, and American Koko, her YouTube series that caught the eye of Viola Davis and Julius Tennon, whose JuVee Productions company went on to executive-produce it for ABC digital. In 2017, the husband and wife duo championed the creative while working with her and gushed about her talent.
“Diarra is just amazing, she has a unique perspective, a unique voice,” said Tennon to Access Hollywood about Kilpatrick.
“You don’t always find an artist who has a different voice, you find a lot of imitators out there,” added Davis who called the star “anointed” in her work.
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Through her anointing, it’s clear that Kilpatrick is serious about her craft. Not only that, but she’s also serious about her stomping grounds which are highlighted in her BET+ series Diarra From Detroit. Although it was shot elsewhere, Kilpatrick was adamant about making sure the intricacies of Detroit were captured down to the slang and the spirit of the natives who she described as “some of the most fascinating and distinctive people” she’s ever met.
The eight-episode dark comedy executive produced by Kenya Barris follows a divorcing schoolteacher who refuses to believe she’s been ghosted by her rebound (and very fine) Tinder date. Her search for the missing man with whom she had a strong connection pulls her into a decades-old mystery involving the Detroit underworld. As the case unfolds, she assembles a Scooby-Doo-like crew to get the bottom of her date’s disappearance and it’s just as entertaining as it sounds.
During a recent panel conversation about Diarra From Detroit at ESSENCE Hollywood House with Stephanie Dunivan, Essence’s VP of Branded Solutions, Kilpatrick noted how the unique concept for the show came about.
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“It’s a lot of things I love coming together, the city of Detroit, the city that I love, the genre that I love,” said Kilpatrick. “I love detective shows, mystery shows, I grew up sitting with my granny while she watched Perry Mason, Columbo, Matlock.”
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She added that a real-life story about a Detroit child’s disappearance also “ignited her imagination” and led her to create the series that was created with Black women in mind.
“We made this show first for you. It’s so important to me to see black women of all shades, of all sizes, revealing just the truth about ourselves.”
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The writer/actress later expanded on her love for mysteries in a PAPER magazine feature about the show that stars not only her but Morris Chestnut, Phylicia Rashad, DomiNque Perry, Bryan Clark, and Claudia Logan.
“I feel like it’s my duty to collect my inheritance,” said Kilpatrick. “When my grandmother passed on, the only thing I wanted [from her]was her VHS tapes. She didn’t have wealth to pass on to me — what she passed on was the experience of sitting up under her while she watched her stories. I don’t have a trust fund, I have the stories of my city, and I have the stories of the people who raised me and I feel like that’s how I’ll get my inheritance.”
For Diarra Kilpatrick, Detroit is more than just home! In her @OfficialBETPlus series “Diarra From Detroit,” she portrays the eponymous title character and talked to PAPER about how she hopes to drive the narrative authentically. Read the interview at the linkinbio. #ad #DiarraFromDetroit Videography – autre fish
♬ original sound – PAPER Magazine
The first three episodes of Diarra From Detroit premiered March 21 on BET+ with new episodes dropping weekly on Thursdays.
—Dani Canada
Lex Scott Davis’ Dazzling Hollywood Run Is Continuing
Emerging star Alexis Scott Davis is sizzling screens, commanding carpets, and breaking barriers as one of Black Hollywood’s hottest newcomers.
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Known for her roles as Nya in The First Purge and Toni Braxton in the 2016 Lifetime television film Toni Braxton: Unbreak My Heart, the talented Baltimore native recently starred alongside John Cena, Jermaine Fowler, and more in Prime Video’s comedy, Ricky Stanicky.
In 2018, she made her big screen debut in the Action film Superfly before landing roles in Horror-Thriller The First Purge, the raucous Netflix series Florida Man, and the polarizing drama A Lot of Nothing directed by Mo McRae.
Davis went on to marry actor/director Mo McRae on July 21, 2019, after less than a year of being engaged during a fairytale ceremony.
The couple shared on Instagram that they wanted an “unplugged” wedding to ensure that all of their guests were “present in the moment” as they shared personalized vows. The couple met on the set of The First Purge and have two children, born in 2020 and 2022 making the bubbling Black actress a very busy lady.
Despite that, she’s still staying true to her love for her craft and earlier this year she was announced as one of the stars of NBC’s highly anticipated legal drama Suits: LA–an extension of the wildly popular Suits universe.
According to a press release, her character Erica Rollins is a “savvy and strong-willed rising star at the firm who is shrewd enough to test the loyalty of her associates only to admire some of them for not having any.
Suits L.A. centers around Ted Black (Stephen Amell)–a former federal prosecutor from New York who teams up with his old pal, Stuart Lane (Josh McDermitt), to represent powerful clients in Los Angeles while building Black Lane Law, which specializes in criminal and entertainment law.
We see you, Lex Scott Davis, and wish you much success as you ascend even further to new heights.
-Alex Ford
Multifaceted Actress Aisha Hinds Continues To Shine
Aisha Hinds’ versatility, spirituality, and dedication to her craft continue to catch our eye.
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If this Bubbling Black Actress from the Big Apple looks familiar it’s for good reason. Hinds has appeared in almost every major network TV drama including NYPD Blue, Law & Order SVU, Lost, True Blood, Prison Break, and more. In 2017 the deeply spiritual star landed a breakout role in WGN’s Underground portraying Harriet Tubman which she likened to an out-of-body experience where Tubman took over her spirit and told her story through her.
“She is a legend, an icon, a soldier on the side of justice, a spiritual warrior, and a servant of God, as well as the one of the baddest women to literally ever walk the land. I surrendered to her spirit. She lived such a full, complex, and irrefutably-dynamic life that all the craft in the world would be insufficient in honoring her legacy.” she told Kam Williams of The Aquarian.
“I did my homework, of course, by inhaling as much literature as was available to find, so that when it was time to shoot I could hopefully exhale her. However, the real truth is that her spirit is so POWERFUL that it consumes you. I was literally reduced to basic breath and blinks while she inhabited my vessel and told her story through me.”
If you’re curious about how Hinds spiritually connects with characters in this way, she credits it to her grandmothers.
“I had praying grandmothers who bathed me in “The Word” and filled the atmosphere with worship,” the star told The Aquarian. “Though I developed my own personal spiritual relationship later in life, the foundation they laid is what my faith was built upon. I am indebted to them always for cradling me in the heart of Christ and encouraging my passion to press towards the mark of the high calling on my life, wherever that takes me.”
After Underground, Hinds later returned to network television for a drama series alongside Angela Basset in Ryan Murphy’s hit drama 9-1-1.
As episodes aired, watchers fell in love with Hinds’ character Henrietta “Hen” Wilson who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community and married to her spouse, Karen.
Hinds told W Magazine that it’s an honor playing Henrietta considering that television is mostly centered around white cisgender men.
“It’s an honor and it’s a responsibility that I don’t take lightly. Every time I run into people outside of the show, I’m always hearing very personal stories about the impact of Hen, or the impact of Hen and Karen, or the impact of Michael,” she said. “It continues to give deeper purpose for me into why it is that I do this show, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to be able to give voice to Hen and to represent Hen in a field of work that’s heavily populated by white cisgender men. I’m grateful that she’s in this container of network television. It gives inspiration to our viewers but also beautifully normalizes the presence of the LGBTQ+ community.”
Hinds is going strong on the show anchored by not only portrayals of members of the LGBTQ+ community but by Black women ready to save the day. Her recurring role lets her showcase her acting chops and in real life, she continues to buck against the narrative of what black women “should look like.” For Hinds, it’s fully intentional and the actress whose style and aesthetic are inspired by Diana Ross and Grace Jones, sees it as an “opportunity.”
She told The Aquarian her look is meant to “honor the legacy of the lives drawn into the lines in my face, the broad of my nose, the dark of my eyes, the fullness of my lips, and coal in my complexion.”
Aisha Hinds, will celebrate you in all your glory.
-Noah Williams
