Yahoo Lifestyle Hollywood's Hidden Truths: 13 Black Celebs Share Their Eye-Opening Childhood Acting Experiences
From That's So Raven to Sister, Sister, we've witnessed some incredible talent grow from child actors to bonafide Hollywood stars.
However, the life of a child star isn't always glitz and glam, as we've seen in Demi Lovato's Child Star documentary. For many Black actors, the pressures of being a child actor also came with struggles, both behind the scenes and in the public eye.
Below is a list of 13 more Black celebrities who've opened up about their experiences working in Hollywood at a young age:
Though she already had a few acting credits under her belt, Shahidi rose to fame after taking on the role of Zoey Johnson in Black-ish and Grown-ish. However, in an interview with Yahoo, she revealed that her experience didn't reflect the horror stories that typically come from child stars. Still, she had to deal with her own struggles as a young Black girl growing up in the limelight.
"I've been grateful for that, for the most part. I haven't had absolutely absurd experiences within this industry. And I felt very protected by the presence of my parents and other people," Shahidi said. "But I do have to say that, as a young woman, as a young Black girl, I know I’ve done many moments where I’ve had interviews, or I’ve opened myself up, and suddenly they jumped to the conclusion that, if I use too many big words, I’m a politician or I’m afraid to open up, or I’m protecting something. I remember there being a moment where I felt like I was being really authentic, and I kept seeing these things, and I was like, how did you land here? How did you put your own stuff on my story?"
2.Tyler James Williams
Williams has strayed away from controversy throughout his career. However, coming to age in the public eye wasn't necessarily easy for him, especially when considering the era in which his career began blossoming. He was 13 years old when Everybody Hates Chris debuted, and having to experience his formative years during the rise of the internet was "the weirdest shit in the world," he told Vanity Fair.
"So, as I'm going through the most awkward years of my life, everyone sees it. I think my voice was cracking nonstop during seasons two and three. I was trying to find myself in front of everybody. And everybody had an opinion and was getting used to getting theirs out," he said.
Adjusting to fame at that age was "traumatic," he said, adding, "I still get triggered by things that are part of everybody else's childhood. Every time someone comes up to me, regardless of what it is they recognize me for, what that says to me in the moment is that I'm seen. I have to be on, immediately, because someone's watching.”
3.Meagan Good
From Doogie Howser, M.D. to Eve's Bayou and Friday, Meagan Good's career has been fruitful since a young age, but the transition into her adult career wasn't effortless. She explained how being featured in 50 Cent's "21 Questions" music video helped with that. By the time she was in her early 20s, she was still getting cast to play characters that were 16 or 17 years old. Her appearance in 50 Cent's video ultimately influenced her public image as a mature young woman.
"It worked so well that I kind of got pigeonholed in that kind of space, so it was like, 'Oh, she's the young, sexy girl, so let's just let her do that in everything,'" Good said in an interview with TV One. These roles left her stagnant, especially when she strived towards professional challenges that would help her grow. "Throughout my 20s, there were points where I enjoyed it, and there were other parts where it's like...they put the glass ceiling and put me in a box and say, 'Just be this one thing.'"
4.Tia & Tamera Mowry
Tia & Tamera Mowry undoubtedly had a grip on everyone's televisions throughout the 90s and the 2000s, though their experience as young Black women on predominantly white sets was much different than their co-stars. Tia Mowry opened up about the discrimination, microaggressions, and pay inequality she and her sister faced during their early days in the acting world.
"I remember once the show became a hit, it's very normal for you to ask for a raise. That's what happens, right? People get raises," she said during an episode of Tia Mowry's Quick Fix. "But it was always so hard for my sister and I to get what we felt like we deserved and our paycheck never equaled our counterparts that weren't of, you know, diversity. And that was frustrating. Very, very frustrating."
She also delved into being typecasted because she was biracial. "What was interesting about being biracial as an actor was how you would be labeled. You would have to fit in some sort of stereotype," she continued. "I've been told I'm not Black enough, which was very odd and weird to me. 'You don't look Black enough. I think you would fit more of the Latina role.' It's like, what? These were casting directors who did not understand the different shades of Black culture."
5.Raven-Symoné
From The Cosby Show to becoming the face of a Disney era with That's So Raven, Raven-Symoné grew in front of the world. While she's opened up about the pressure and the trauma she endured growing up in the spotlight, a recent episode of her podcast Tea Time With Raven & Miranda shed light on the shocking reason why she underwent breast reduction and liposuction procedures when she was only 15. She explained how she "went from a triple D all the way down to a B" because "someone said I needed to do it in order to get a show.”
"At the same time, I was like, ‘If you’re gonna take my boobs out, I want a lipo,’” she added. This recent comment came roughly a year after she admitted to suffering from health complications due to these procedures.
6.Keke Palmer
During an emotional appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show, Palmer opened up about some of the trauma she experienced by other adults in the industry who would often disparage her parents because she was making their annual salary off of a movie. "When you become a celebrity child, when you make more money than your parents, it's traumatizing," she explained. "People are judging my parents, and these people gave up everything for me to be who I am today. It has taken so much for me to get to the point of saying, 'You don't get to tell my story, and you don't get to tell their story.' The truth is my parents drove four days and three nights to help their daughter pursue her dreams, and she became a generational talent. I'm not a victim, I'm a victor."
7.Jaleel White
Perhaps nothing will ever top White's performance as Steve Urkel but even with the amount of fame he experienced, he didn't end up facing the same types of troubles as other child stars. For one, his mother was protective, ensuring that there was a clear line between his personal and professional career.
"My mom refused to let me do autograph signings. I was not traveling every weekend being famous someplace. She really was dead-set on me continuing to be a normal kid in school," White told Rolling Stone. "It was a very grounding element in my life. As much as at that time the world kept making a big deal about me being a TV star, she kept pushing me back into a normal kid box as soon as she could." Admittedly, ensuring that he continued to live life as a normal kid and fulfil his commitments in Family Matters made him feel like he was living a "double life."
As a result of his mother's protective instinct, he escaped a familiar path of abuse that many young actors deal with at the hands of predatory adults in the entertainment business. "For one thing, she was a helicopter mom. She was all over my ass because the kids that are left alone are the ones that the predators tend to seek out," he told TODAY. "When I was in the ninth grade, I wore a size nine, and I had to be in the house by nine."
8.Zendaya
Another Disney alum, Zendaya has gone on to shed the image that she had as a child actor to star in HBO's Euphoria and the MCU's Spider-Man trilogy. During an interview with Vogue earlier this year, she spoke about the pressures that came with her early gigs in Hollywood. From having to deliver on set to assuming the role of breadwinner for her family, Zendaya felt she had to be "this perfect being, and be everything that everyone needs me to be, and live up to all these expectations.”
"I have complicated feelings about kids and fame, and being in the public eye, or being a child actor. We’ve seen a lot of cases of it being detrimental," she said. "And I think only now, as an adult, am I starting to go, 'Oh, okay, wait a minute: I’ve only ever done what I’ve known, and this is all I’ve known.' I’m almost going through my angsty teenager phase now because I didn’t really have the time to do it before. I felt like I was thrust into a very adult position. I was becoming the breadwinner of my family very early, and there was a lot of role-reversal happening, and just kind of becoming grown, really.”
9.Michael B. Jordan
Though Micheal B. Jordan already had a pretty extensive resumé in his teen years, he never looked at himself as a child actor. Even after appearing on shows like The Sopranos and The Wire, he felt as though those moments were stepping stones in his career.
"I started at 12, but didn’t really know what I was doing at the moment and didn’t really realize the foundation that I was laying down. And then working with such veterans and such prestigious shows at such a young age, I matured very quickly — working with Bill Cosby and David Simon and the folks over at HBO with The Wire. So it doesn’t seem like it, but I guess I’ve been doing it for, like, 13 years. Man, that’s a long time," he told Forest Whitaker for Interview Magazine in a 2013 article.
10.Skai Jackson
During a 2019 interview with Entertainment Tonight, Jackson revealed that, at the time, she never really had an in-depth conversation about being a child star with her co-stars on Disney's Jessie. "I never got to have a full conversation of how, you know, being a child star is. We haven't fully gotten in-depth, but that's something maybe I should do," she said.
Elsewhere in the interview, she discussed how the onset of the internet impacted her career: "For me, growing up at a young age in the limelight and on social media, I joined Twitter when I was 10, and I got my Instagram when I was 11, so when I joined Instagram, I did notice a lot of hate comments, or people would just, like, nitpick at my appearance, just to be funny," Jackson said. "A lot of people go through this. The most popular people do. And for me, being young, I didn't understand why these people were saying these things. I would get really, really sad."
11.Kenan Thompson
Kenan Thompson was among the many actors who appeared in Demi Lovato's Child Star documentary and opened up about the struggles he faced during his time with Nickelodeon. As the star of All That and Kenan & Kel, he undoubtedly became one of the most recognizable figures on the network. However, that experience didn't come without loads of rejection.
"I really considered not wanting to act anymore if these are the kinds of things I had to go through," he said about getting turned down. "It was almost like I was forced to stay humble, if you will, because when I could have been at my most boisterous, ‘everybody knows my name’ kind of years, I didn’t want that because I didn’t want people to know I was struggling. It’s kind of the beautiful conundrum, the irony of life."
Earlier this year, Thompson spoke out following Quiet On Set. He admitted that he didn't experience similar abuse as his co-stars but offered his empathy to the victims. "My heart goes out to anybody that’s been victimized or their families," he said on Tamron Hall. "I think it’s a good thing that the doc is out, and it’s putting things on display, stories that need to be told for accountability’s sake. But it’s definitely tough to watch because I have fond memories of that place, and I have fond memories of my costars and stuff like that. So to hear that they’ve gone through terrible things like that is really tough."
12.Caleb McLaughlin
The Stranger Things star has grew up in front of our eyes, though his appearance in the Netflix hit series hasn't been all rosey...atleast, among its rapidly growing fanbase. Debuting on the show when he was only 14 years old, he had to deal with excessive anti-Black racism from the show's fans, not just online but in real life, too.
"My very first Comic-Con, some people didn’t stand in my line because I was Black. Some people told me, ‘Oh I didn’t want to be in your line because you were mean to Eleven [Millie Bobby Brown],'" he said at the 2022 edition of Heroes Comic Con Belgium. "Even now, some people don’t follow me or don’t support me because I’m Black. Sometimes, overseas, you feel the racism; you feel the bigotry. Sometimes it’s hard to talk about and for people to understand, but when I was younger, it definitely affected me a lot.”
In response to the fanfare that favored his co-stars, he said that he asked himself why he's the "least favorite." "My parents had to be like, ‘It’s a sad truth, but it’s because you’re the Black child on the show.' Because I was born with this beautiful chocolate skin, I’m not loved,'" he added.
13.Brandy Norwood
Brandy has had a fairytale-like career. Launching her career at 15 years old with a bonafide classic under her belt with her self-titled debut album, and later beating the sophomore slump with Never Say Never, she achieved greatness as both a singer and in television and film. In 1997, Whitney Houston called upon her to star as the titular character in 1997 for ABC TV's Cinderella. "It was unbelievable. For her to cast me in such a role, the first Black princess, I don't know the words to really describe what that feels like," she told People in 2020.
Her appearance as Cinderella turned her into a teen princess but as she began growing into adulthood, she admitted that the pressure she faced began weighing on her heavily. "I struggled with being put in a box of perfection," she says. "I felt like my mistakes would let down everyone if I made them," she added, especially as a role model for young Black girls who saw themselves in Brandy. "I had to make the transition from being a teenager to a woman and figure out what direction I was going to go in."
"I felt like I didn't have the space to grow and to grow up in a safe way," she continued. "I had to deal with so many other opinions about what I should do, how I should be, and what I should look like. And that can get tough when you're trying to find your own voice."
Is there a child star story that sticks out to you? Tell us about it in the comments.
