The 'Murder Mystery 2' actress told ET that having her daughter has helped her 'sit with all the conversations' she's had on colorism.
Jodie Turner-Smith is grateful for all the lessons she's learning in motherhood -- even the unexpected ones.
In a recently published interview with Elle UK, the Murder Mystery 2 star opened up about how her daughter with husband Joshua Jackson, Janie, helped her contend with the colorism she faces as a dark-skinned Black woman.
Reflecting on her childhood, the actress shared how isolating it felt to never see "anybody who looks like [me] held up as beautiful. That definitely affected my psyche. Anyone who has known me throughout my life would say, 'Oh, Jodie has very high self-esteem.' But it affected me, I just faked it till I made it."
"It wasn't until adulthood that I began to come into myself. For a long time, people would even say to me, "You're so pretty... for a dark-skinned girl,'" she added.
Those experiences rippled into adulthood and came into focus when she and Joshua discussed having children. "It's interesting because I had a lot of resistance to becoming a mother and, throughout my life, I always said if I were to have children, I wanted to have Black, Black babies so that I could affirm them as children with the love that I felt I needed to have been affirmed with by the outside world," Jodie told the outlet.
"Then I fell in love with my husband and we talked about having kids. I did have this mini pause, where I was like, 'She's going to be walking through the world not only having an experience that I did not have, but looking like people that, in a way, I'd always felt a little bit tormented by,'" Jodie continued. "Now that I've got this little, tiny, light-skinned boss, I feel like it’s the universe teaching me lessons. I've been given a daughter who looks this way to heal my own conversations around colorism."
When ET spoke with her at the premiere of Netflix's Murder Mystery 2, the 36-year-old expanded on her sentiments, likening her experience to the age-old motto that "the universe is gonna give you what you need" when you're ready to receive it.
"Everybody can put whatever they want, [put] their sh*t on top of you, but at the end of the day, you're gonna get what you're meant to have," she went on, sharing that raising a biracial daughter is continually "pushing me, challenging me [and] making me sit with all the conversations that I've ever had. It's like, that's what it is, you know? And I love that. I love it so much."
Jodie and Joshua welcomed their daughter in April 2020. The actress has been very transparent about the hardship she faced during her pregnancy and how having her husband by her side served as a balm for her fears.
In an interview for AnOther Magazine she shared that, although she loves her life, she finds fame "unnerving," especially because she attributes "a lot" of that fame to her husband's popularity, and thus wants to protect her daughter "for as long as I can."
"I love my life and I’m so grateful for all of the bounties that it provides. It definitely is a little bit unnerving, fame, especially because a lot of my fame comes from the fact that my husband's been famous for a long time and I'm a Black woman married to him. As I said, political body," she explained. "That is a story for people. And that is not what my daughter chose. I want to protect her from that for as long as I can and not let the more negative elements of that affect her. I just want her to feel like a grounded human being, as grounded as one can be when you grow up wealthy... And her father treats her like she is a goddess walking on Earth."
Watch the video below for more on Jodie and Joshua.
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