00:00Hi! I hope you'll forgive me but to do this properly, not just because I'm an
00:05actor and I like to talk about myself, but to do this properly, to honor Takeisha
00:09properly, I have to tell you a teeny bit about myself. Growing up, I was never the
00:14pretty one in my social circle. I was a really smart kid, sometimes a funny one,
00:18a bit of an overachiever, an awkward theater kid, but beautiful was not a
00:23word that was ever used to describe me, at least not on the outside. Some of this
00:27had to do with the societal norms and prejudices around beauty. Often the
00:31girls that were called pretty had much lighter skin, thinner bone structure,
00:35straighter, less textured hair. In my memoir, Thicker Than Water, I talk about
00:40wanting so badly to be an actor and reaching for a life as a working actor,
00:44but not as any kind of famous star, because in my mind I just wasn't the kind
00:49of girl who was ever going to wind up on the cover of anybody's magazine. So when I
00:53got the call early in my career that I was going to be featured inside my
00:56very first beauty magazine, I totally freaked out. I won't say which publication
01:01it was because it wasn't in style. That didn't happen till much later, but
01:06nonetheless it was pretty cool and I was really excited until I wasn't. Very
01:11quickly my enthusiasm turned into terror when I started to think about my hair.
01:16See, back then nobody talked about textured hair. People spoke in the now
01:20antiquated ideas about good hair and bad hair, nice hair and difficult hair. There
01:26was no real embrace in the beauty space for naturally textured hair and there
01:30were very few hairstylists working at a high level who would know what to do
01:35with hair like mine. I wasn't in a place in my career where I could request or
01:39demand the hairstylist of my choice, like I do today, but I also didn't want to risk
01:46working with a hairstylist that would cause real damage to my hair with the wrong
01:50products or too much heat. So I did what a lot of other black women had been doing for
01:54decades. I spent my own extra time and extra energy and extra money to get my
02:00hair done by somebody else in my community before showing up on set. So I
02:04called my manager, Katherine Atkinson, also a black woman, to help me find somebody and
02:08she said, there is this one girl. She's amazing. She was the backup shampoo girl at
02:16my salon, but I let her wash my hair once and now she's the only person who touches my
02:21hair. I was like, really? Enter Takesha Sturdivant. She came to my house, she hooked
02:29me up, I went to that photo shoot, I took some really nice pictures and some other
02:32guy got all the credit for doing absolutely nothing to my hair. Not too
02:36long after that, Takesha convinced me to stop relaxing my hair to embrace my
02:40natural bouncy curls and so I was sitting in a chair in this tiny kitchen of my
02:44walk-up apartment in New York while she was doing my hair for another photo shoot
02:48where somebody else would get the credit. And I said to Takesha, what do you want to
02:52do? This woman? No pause, no hesitation. She immediately said, I want to do photo
02:59shoots, I want to do red carpets, I want to do covers of magazines, I want to do
03:03fashion campaigns and beauty campaigns, I want to do movies, I want to do TV shows,
03:06I want to travel all around the world. I was floored. I was flummoxed. Something
03:12inside me got really stirred up because, I mean, look, deep down, I kind of wanted those
03:16things too, but I had never called it out in such a clear way. I don't even think
03:20I'd called it out to myself. I was battling imposter syndrome and limited
03:25beliefs, but Takesha was very clear about her dreams and she believed in her
03:29right to achieve them. Takesha has always been fabulous. Early in my career, we
03:33started to travel places together and nobody would allow me a personal
03:36hairstylist, but I would beg Takesha to come as my plus one. We would share a hotel
03:40room and we would split the cost. Inevitably, we would get off the plane and I would be in
03:44like Gap jeans and a backpack and a baseball cap and Takesha would be in like
03:48couture sweats, Louis Vuitton hand luggage, Gucci sunglasses, perfectly coiffed
03:53hair, and they would look at her and say, Ms. Washington, because obviously she was
03:56the star. Sometimes I reflect on the trajectory of my career and all of these
04:02photo shoots and red carpets and fashion and beauty campaigns and covers and, I
04:07mean, at least four in-style covers, right? And I think about all the places that I've
04:11been able to travel to and all the movies and TV shows and how blessed I've been to
04:16have the work that I've had and I think, did Takesha manifest my life for me? I mean,
04:22her belief in herself and in her dreams led us both into a creative adventure. We
04:30have basically spent the past two decades doing all the things that she told me
04:34she wanted to do. And we've grown up together as artists and as colleagues and
04:40as entrepreneurs and as women and as wives and as mothers and as friends.
04:46Takesha, thank you for letting me ride the coattails of your dreams. I am forever
04:53grateful for not just what you do and how brilliantly you do it, but for who you are
04:57and how you have impacted my life. I love you, I'm so proud of you, and I'm really honored
05:03to be here with you and for you tonight. You are truly an inspiration.
05:07You are truly an inspiration.
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