*Singing “I kissed a girl and I like it,” beautiful “Soul Food” and “New Jack City” actress Vanessa Estelle Williams chops it up with radio and TV personality Jazmyn Summers about being in the second season of Showtime’s “The L Word: Generation Q“ which drops this August. It also stars Jennifer Beals of “Flashdance” fame.
Initially playing a woman in a same sex relationship challenged her, she tells EUR Spotlight, but after she got into it she concluded:
“Hey, this is nice I get it. I feel really honored in telling all the stories of our Black women and that includes the LGBTQ community so I was open as an actor to stretch myself to inhabit and investigate the lifestyle and humanity of every single type of Black woman.”
And Vanessa says she is excited to finally be the love interest.
“Colorism didn’t allow me to play the romantic interest in ‘New Jack City’ so its nice being the romantic interest in ‘L Word.'”
Vanessa tells Spotlight that as a beautiful chocolate queen, colorism impacted her self esteem:
“I had to learn to love my hair that grows naturally out of my head, to love my complexion and love that my nose isn’t keen. I had to retrain my colonized brain. Wearing my hair was part of that self growth and self love.”
She believes that “colorism comes straight from the plantation. Straight from the false belief in white supremacy and all the false beliefs in our heads from a system of racism that’s meant to oppress us and put us down.”
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As a mother of two black boys she is trying to instill in them Black consciousness.
“I feel so blessed to have two sons who I consciously parent. I read a whole a lot of books but my mom died when I was 10. It was a huge blow and my grandmother raised me. My dad wasn’t in the house and I wanted to be sure to have a consciousness about raising my children to give them as few wounds as possible and have less reasons for them to be on the couch. I was raised in the do as I say tradition but I broke that with my boys. I honor what they think, what they have to say I want them to feel respected and to be heard,” she shards with EURweb Spotlight.
Vanessa discloses to Jazmyn that losing her mother, “…gave me a sense of abandonment, a sense of fear, wondering if I am really loved. Those issues stay with me today. Those great losses absorb into our lives and shape who we are.”
Vanessa, who is a strong believer in therapy to work through the traumas in our lives has used it to help her heal. She’s also committed to healing the body through healthy eating.
This gorgeous black siSTAR looks like she’s 32 years old even though she’s been in the business 32 years. Her secret?
“I’ve been a vegan since the 90s “not having toxins in my body alleviates a lot of health issues that plague our culture its given me a card to healthiness.”
I tried to get her to spill the tea on scandals from “New Jack City,” but Vanessa plead the fifth. She did reveal one little tidbit, though.
“After Howard University threw this huge party, Wesley hopped into the limo with all these girls on top who were singing I wanna sex you up and I believe he took full advantage and that’s exactly what they did.”
Vanessa is a poet, singer and plays Dr. Valerie Grant on the country’s longest running soap opera “Days of Our Lives.” Hear her rock some poetry from her book Shine and talk more about health, motherhood, her career and colorism on the video:
Interview/article by Jazmyn Summers. Follow her @jaztalk1 on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. And subscribe to her YouTube channel. Video editing by www.patrickhousefilms.com
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