Since catapulting into the limelight thanks to her role as Zoey Johnson on ABC’s Blackish and Freeform’s Grownish, Yara Shahidi has gracefully matured into a bright young star and passionate activist. In the August issue of Elle, the actress spoke candidly about the future she has envisioned for herself and the Black community, the value of the those standing in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, and continuing to highlight Black joy through artistic expression and mentorship. “We’ve consistently been in conversations about how to use this space for something that’s powerful,” Yara, 20, said of this pivotal moment.
But while educating and taking the next generation under her wing is a top priority to her, Yara is wholly aware that, as she said, “Society tries to take away our ability to imagine, it takes away our ability to participate in a larger collective and nuanced Black imaginary world, because we are consistently burdened with the task of dealing with our reality.”
Like so many, Yara has been thinking about the state of the nation. For her, the focus is on “my Black and brown communities.” Though she’s young, Yara has noticed the difference between the action of the past and results of the present. “I think the difference [in the past] was a lot of work was pretty quiet and there wasn’t as much of a public narrative around it, but the work was still being done.” Now, as a series regular on Blackish and the lead of her own show with Grownish, Yara is seeing firsthand how members of her community are “doing the work 24/7, 100 percent of the time, with whatever their platform is.”