I think about what I grew up seeing, what I didn't see growing up, and what it felt like when I did see someone who I thought that I could relate to, just living their life on screen.
Jodie Turner-Smith
The racial dynamics over here are fraught. White supremacy is overt. It's the reason I don't want to raise my kids here.
That callousness that comes from feeling like you have to survive on your own - I really empathized with that.
I understand we love to talk about black girl magic, but sometimes that is a term that allows people to put us in this character like we're not real people that feel real things.
In America, interracial dating or marriage is not something that is as accepted. Certain people feel strongly against it, in both communities. I felt it from the black community. It is so complicated. I don't want to give it too much energy.
I don't really believe in coincidence.
Even with my family, I feel sort of 'other.' I'm the only one of my siblings who wasn't born in Jamaica. For a long time, I didn't feel very connected to Jamaican culture, but because I was raised so heavily with that cultural influence, I realized that my inner monologue is a Jamaican woman.
I'm from Peterborough, which is two hours north of London.
I think of L.A. as my home now, in large part because I became the entity that I am in L.A. I always say to people that my coming-of-age happened in L.A., the unraveling of the person I was pretending to be for a long time, and then finding of the person I feel like I now am.
I've always been 'other' in all the spaces that I've been in. Even when I first moved to America, just the idea that I was a dark-skinned black girl from England with an accent. It's one thing to be a black girl, but it's another to be a dark black girl. I was chastised for that. I was chastised for the way I spoke.
I didn't come to L.A. thinking, okay, I'm going to be an actor, so my progression was just kind of organic, starting in print modeling, which I was far less successful in, then acting in television commercials.
So I was really excited when I came to America about meeting black people. But it was a huge culture shock, because I was rejected by the black community. They were like, 'You talk like a white girl.' People would call me an Oreo. All I wanted was acceptance.
There was this wave of people who were upset that I was possibly married to a white man.
England has gone off the rails.
I'm learning there are certain things I have to really keep for myself.
The first job I booked was on 'True Blood.' I played a blood siren.
My family is Jamaican. We were just the slaves that were dropped off over there. And at the end of the day when you live and exist as a Black person in America, at least to white society, to a certain extent, no one is asking where you're from and where you were born.
When I first started in modeling, I went back to England, and it was really hard, because I would go around to the agencies and they would be like, 'We already have one mixed-race black girl.'
We definitely experience racism in England and different levels of oppression as well. Anywhere affected by colonialism there's certain kinds of race relations and class relations going on.
People are making a lot more noise about representation and diversity. But I think modeling is one of the professions where people can be kind of racist.
What's unique about America is that the country itself was built upon oppression, it's in the very foundation.
The fact that I'm being cast in a show to play a female lead and I'm the dark-skinned Black woman with short hair, it's so incredible.
I read the 'Nightflyers' novella and knowing that it was something that had been written by George R.R. Martin, knowing how those stories kind of go, I was really curious to see what happened to my character in the source material.
I watched the Sandra Bland documentary and her tape itself over and over and over and over again, and just the reality of that, the fear in that.
I am deeply moved by sculptures of powerful women.
I think there's always been a little performer in me. But having a family that are Jamaican immigrants, having this idea that, 'Oh, that's what you're going to do for a living?' seems kind of out of reach and not a reality. It's like, 'get a real job.'
No offense to anybody from Pittsburgh, but Pittsburgh wasn't for me.
What I love about my parents and Jamaican families is that exuberance we have, which I think is where I get my joy from, my energy and my attitude.
I went to business school so what they teach you in business school was that success is about positioning yourself to get lucky. It's not just about how hard you work. It is also about a little bit of luck. To position yourself to catch the luck when it comes.
While I might not have a specific experience that is fully American, there is still a knowledge, something that I logically understand as a black woman and a black woman who is existing in America and a black woman who is in the diaspora that are just known quantities that I think anyone can relate to who is black.
It's a very complicated relationship that I have with America. I love it so much. And I also see the places where it's flawed.
