How did you manage to stay grounded all these years when you were exposed to the film and television industry during your formative years?
If anything, being a child actor was at least retrospectively quite a breeze because of my parents. My parents were very intentional, especially in my elementary and middle school years. I wasn’t really pulled out of school, there were a couple of times that I was homeschooled. It was a personal choice because I appreciated the academics in a certain programme, but I was still in school, had hobbies and all of that, and acting was something that I went off to do with my family. I still very much had these beautiful experiences associated with acting, of just growing up and so it never hindered me.
It wasn’t until “Black-ish” that major changes were made because I was in high school and high school was a little harder to balance. I ended up enrolling in a distance learning programme with The Dwight School. “Black-ish” was an adjustment, but it’s a beautiful environment and once we adjusted, it was really figuring out how to live in between takes. We have so much fun on set, but it’s still so integral and crucial that I had a life outside of work. My parents have always given me that and demonstrated that, and have always said that acting is something that we do, and it’s not who we are. That’s something that has really spoken to me because it’s about making sure that I allow my other interests to flourish so I never look back and say: “Well, if it wasn’t for this, I would have been doing XYZ.”
