A Quote by Lexi Underwood
Growing up, usually when I saw a black female on television, she was either a broken character or sidekick.
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Growing up, I saw Mum as being so celebratory of our culture. So I was surprised to hear - during discussions sparked by the Black Lives Matter protests - about the racism she experienced growing up, and the shame she once felt about being black.
I think, growing up, the female friendships that I saw on television were portrayed as catty and vicious.
I want to push that no matter what race you are, you're never just a sidekick or broken character. You're the main character, you're the funny character, you can be whatever you want.
I do feel privileged to play Elektra, because definitely she is a strong female character. She's a strong character. It would be nice if eventually we'd just say she's a strong character, not a strong female character.
I'm very conditioned by my surroundings, by the influences of social media, by the television I watch. And I always found, growing up, that even inspiring female characters or complex female characters in television and film, I often found that their complexity was actually just another facet of their sexuality.
Growing up, there was this explosion of B television. 'Fresh Prince of Bel Air,' you have 'Family Matters,' 'A Different World.' I had examples - of black children, black families, black women, black men - that represented who I was.
I think every time you take a female character, a black character, a Hispanic character, a gay character, and make that the point of the character, you are minimalizing the character.
It's very limited what women who look like me can do on television. You don't often see 'my type' on television unless she's a sidekick - certainly not a three-dimensional series regular who is pertinent to the plot.
Any movie you see, if Tom Cruise is in an action movie or whatever it is, The Avengers, there's going to be a kick-ass female character. Usually one. And there's a term for this, but I don't know what it is. But someone's coined a term where there's one female character who's incredibly tough and strong and just as good as the guys at whatever it is they’re doing, and usually wearing black, skin-tight clothes, and [she] has no personality whatsoever, and is not funny.
I grew up on comics in the 1960s era, when 'Wonder Woman' was rather silly. She was an interchangeable female character plagued by bad stereotypes. She cried at the drop of a hat, she was worried about how she looked, all of that.
I'm not a writer; I'm an actor. My job is to take whatever character I'm given and - especially because I have the responsibility of being a black actress, and I know young black girls are looking up, and everyone's looking to what's on television - to just try to give whatever character I'm playing as three-dimensional a portrayal as I can.
The interesting thing about doing serial television is that the character is growing separate from you, the character and the show are growing, and you get to observe that and participate with it in a way that I think is actually really exciting for an actor.
As an actor I'm part of a long line of character people you can take back to the silent movies. There's always the little guy who's the sidekick to the tall, good-looking guy who gets the girl. People tend to not think of themselves as Tom Cruise or Bruce Willis. The leading man is something that they might like to be, but they aren't. The sidekick is somebody that they feel a little closer to, because the sidekick has the same human failings that they do.
The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.
The protagonist in 'Winter's Bone' was a really good role for a female. She was strong; she didn't have to conform to something or be a sidekick to any man. That's part of what you're responding to; it's a woman-centric situation. Her value in the film was not reliant on any man.
I never saw Black Santa growing up. I would have loved to.
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