Gabrielle Nevaeh Green is unquestionably a young Hollywood favorite face. You may remember that the talented teen starred in All That prior to joining the fun on That Girl Lay Lay. Recently, Green sat down with JustJaredJr.com, at The Black Hair Experience‘s Black Girl Magic Block Party, to talk about natural hair, That Girl Lay Lay, her new music, and what projects are coming soon. Take a look at what she has to say in her exclusive interview below.

JJJ: What does this kind of event mean to you?

GNG: This kind of event means everything to me, because when I was younger, I really did not like my natural hair. It was something that made me stand out, in what I felt the wrong way, because it was just different and it didn’t look like everybody else’s. With this event, it’s showing young black girls and young girls of color that your natural hair is beautiful and that’s something that I really stand for.

JJJ: Do you have any advice for young black girls who may struggle with loving their hair?

GNG: I would say that your natural hair is what makes you special and sometimes people can’t take when someone else is so special. I would say the best advice I would give to you is to let your light shine, don’t dim it for anyone else, and you are beautiful just the way you are.

JJJ: What is your crazy craziest hair experience?

GNG: A good one or a bad one? (Both!) Oooh, let’s see. A crazy hair experience? I remember when I was younger, I used to straighten my hair a lot, and that caused a lot of heat damage so I lost a lot of hair. So that is kind of the craziest experience that I’ve had with my hair, is I had to regrow, basically the entire back of my hair, because of all of that heat damage. A crazy good experience, I would say… I had to wear this wig once and I had to get my hair braided, and it took them three hours to braid all of my hair down as flat as possible for the wig. I mean, I’ve never got like gum stuck in my hair or anything.

JJJ: What was your favorite hair look that you’ve done?

GNG: I really love wearing it naturally, but I also love wearing it braided, because there’s so many different designs that you can do with braids. You can put color, you can put different embellishments. It’s really cool when I experiment with different hairstyles, but I would say my top two is wearing it down naturally and wearing it braided.

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JJJ: What’s the biggest difference between doing All That and now That Girl Lay Lay?

GNG: I would say with All That, I was doing all these different characters, and all these different hairstyles, so transitioning from All That to That Girl Lay Lay, I had to really focus on one character, because Sadie is one being. Over the course of these two seasons, we’ve really developed Sadie’s personality and Sadie’s journey, whereas with All That, there were all these different characters, all these different storylines. The biggest change was developing one set character, and also kind of learning how to get out of that sketch comedy/comedic style, because sitcom and sketch are two very different genres, so the transition for me was very interesting but it was also very fun.

JJJ: I thought it would have been the opposite.

GNG: Yeah, see I’m kind of a nut, so like in my day-to-day life, I have very many personalities, so it was difficult to kind of focus on one at first but it’s also kind of refreshing because that’s the kind of work that I do wanna get into it. I do want to get into film and more dramatic acting so this was a really great step for me as far as going from sketch to more of the sitcom stuff.

JJJ: What has been your favorite episode of Lay Lay so far?

GNG: My favorite episode, I really love the Granny Fae Fae episode (season one finale) because that was kind of a callback to my All That days when I got to play the character of Granny Fae Fae. My other favorite episode, from this season, would probably be the animal episode because that’s when we get to find out one of Lay Lay’s new superpowers, which is teleportation. And we also had a possum, which was crazy! I actually had to do possum training, which was insane. They had to let me hold the possum, I had to have possum bonding time, as they called it.

JJJ: If you could have anyone on as a guest star, who would it be? Anyboy?

GNG: Oh my gosh, can I give you my top three? Okay, I would pick Beyoncé. LOVE Beyoncé, okay?! I would do Zendaya. Zendaya is so amazing, everything she does is just fantastic. She’s one of my role models. So I would do Beyoncé, Zendaya and I would do… Maybe Yara Shahidi, she’s really good!

JJJ: What was your favorite moment from the “When Worlds Collide” crossover?

GNG: Going way back! That crossover was so fun because, in real life, I’m actually friends with all the Nick kids, so it was really, really cool to have all of my friends in one room and just kind of hang out with them. You know, you don’t really get to see everybody all at once all the time, it’s usually in spurts, so my favorite part was really working with my friends and getting to really see all the shows together.

Gabrielle has much more to say in this exclusive interview. To read the interview in its entirety, click here. But first, make sure to set a reminder for November 4 as Gabrielle will star as the voice of Clawdeen in the new Monster High animated series on Nickelodeon.

But wait, you can’t leave until you check out Gabrielle’s new music, “Just Wait” (feat. JD McCrary). Let us know what you think!

 

Photo Credit: (Featured Image) Gabrielle Nevaeh Green Instagram; Gabrielle Nevaeh Green Instagram