Top Quotes: “Around The Way Girl” — Taraji P. Henson
Young Life
“All my life, I’ve been a hustler. Where I come from, that’s what you did when you wanted that fresh pair of sneakers, or the gold necklace that spelled your name out in bubble-letter script, or that pack of cherry Now and Later candy your mom didn’t want to blow good money on, because every penny she wasted on crap you didn’t need meant not having the cash for the things that mattered: the light bill, gas for the car, food for the fridge, rent so you had a place to lay your head at night. Of course, there were plenty of kids around my way who hustled in the traditional sense of the world to get what their families couldn’t afford, there are back alleys and dark shadows all throughout Southeast DC that tell that story. But my hustle wasn’t nearly as sinister or desperate. I was just really good at relieving the people around me of their cash so I could have a few dollars for my pocket — a skill I was practicing as early as 8 years old back in 1978. If the lady down the hall with all the kids had to run to Safeway to pick up some eggs, cereal, and milk, I’d step righ tin. ‘Go ahead, I’ll watch the kids…for $5.’ Somebody needed help getting bags up the stairs? I’d chip in for a dollar or two. Nobody had to worry about sweeping a porch, folding laundry, or cornrowing their daughter’s full head of hair while I was around: for a fee, I’d handle all that and toss in a smile, free of charge.
I brought that ‘get money’ spirit with me everywhere I went because there was little money to spare in my house. I saw my single mom struggling to make ends meet on her department store salary; she may have risen from the stockroom as a price tag attacher to her own office as divisional manager of distribution and logistics over the course of my childhood, but she was still raising a kid on her own in one of the most expensive cities in America, without any financial help from my father.”
“Eventually, we moved into a garden-style apartment in southeast DC. My mom scratched and saved every penny she could and cashed in some savings bonds she’d been keeping for me to pay the first and second months’ rent plus the security deposit. When we moved in, we had nothing but that twin bedroom set my father let my mom take and the few clothes we had left after the flood. Both my mom and I slept on that twin bed until she woke up one too many times to find me lying on the floor. My Aunt Pat and her husband gave my mom an extra full-size bed frame they had stored away, and my mom got herself credit approval for a mattress set that cost her $188. I don’t know how she can still remember the exact amount, but I’m guessing when you live through hard times and make it out, those things are forever embedded in your memory. Gradually, mom was able to purchase a used kitchen table and two chairs from Salvation Army and a living room set from used furniture store nearby.”
“Taraji’s Basement Apartment Salon opened its doors to my fellow friends, cousins, aunts, fly girls at Howard, and whoever else had money, and I began hooking up wet sets and acrylic nails for extra cash. $20 could get you a full set of acrylic nails, which would have cost double that in one of the local salons. I was good at it, too; so good, in fact, that had this acting thing not worked out, I’m sure I would have been someone’s cosmetologist somewhere, styling hair, doing makeup, and hooking up nails.”
“[My minor character] was nobody to everybody, but I made her somebody to me.
When opening night came, I was ready. My heart was beating so fast on the side of that stage waiting for my part, I’m surprised I didn’t pass out. Finally, Deena said the line that gave me my queue. I sashayed across that stage with a gown I thought was the most beautiful dress in the world, matched only by my wide, beaming grin. Everything about my body language said, ‘Yes, Deena, of course, you will choose my dress for your world tour.’
Deena, unimpressed, opened the garment bag and angrily tossed it back at me, throwing in a few choice words for good measure and telling me to get the hell out of her sight. Devastated but convinced I’d been wronged, I stomped back across the stage, stopped midway, tossed a nasty side-eye at Deena, and then stomped out the door without saying a word.
I was on the other side of the curtain, giggling with nervous laughter, floating with excitement when my ears were finally able to focus on the audience’s reactions: they were hysterical with laughter. Out of everything that was happening onstage, it was my timing and foolery that they remembered — a moment that came at the end of a transition scene. I may have had a bit part, but I was in Dreamgirls, and folk who counted were paying attention, including my mother. She wasn’t convinced there was a career in acting, and having scrimped and saved to get three steps forward only to consistently fall two steps behind, she wanted something more secure for me than ‘starving artist.’ That’s all she could see for me, her child who was born with neither silver spoon nor serious connection to Hollywood, a glittery mirage seemingly so far from reach it might as well have been on the other side of the galaxy. Her questions made sense: ‘I’m a single mom, how on earth can I support you in this? What if you can’t get a job? Then what?’ It was hard to argue against her judgment. But on the opening night of Dreamgirls, when she watched me strutting across that stage, finally she saw me, and she pledged her unconditional support.”
“I got around campus to every one of my classes all winter long, without missing so much as a lecture or an assignment. I didn’t consider it hard, it was just what it was. I got acclimated and refused to treat my pregnancy as though it were an obstacle. I was boisterous and in-your-face with it. Of course, there were haters and naysayers sneaking looks at my belly and whispering, ‘Taraji’s pregnant,’ and praying for my downfall. They thought I would stop. Little did they know, I was just getting started.
The first person I made this clear to was my drama professor Mike Malone. I marched my fat ass right up to him one afternoon and called his name like only I could.
‘Oh God,’ he said, shaking his head and laughing. He always did that when he saw me coming; he used to tell me all the time that I reminded him of my idol, Debbie Allen, with whom he was close. I was a spitfire, he’d say, just like her: ‘What do you want?’
‘Look here, don’t you bench me because I’m pregnant,’ I said through clenched teeth, my belly poking through my T-shirt. ‘Just because I’m fat doesn’t mean anything.’
And when auditions came for a play Mr. Malone was directing called E Man, I waddled my fat ass in there and sang the hell out of the audition song and did the choreography, big belly and all, and then I leaned into my right hip and looked him dead in the eye.
Mr. Malone gave me that part, but not out of pity. I earned it. The play was about a man’s attributes and all the personalities attached to them, each of which came to life. I played his cheating wife, and Mr. Malone switched up the part a bit so that my pregnancy made sense: under the rewrite, my character was supposed to be pregnant and unsure of whether it was her husband or her side piece who’d fathered the child. I was doing choreography on that stage and climbing up ladders and doing everything a nonpregnant person would have done, so much so that people were convinced that I was wearing a pregnancy pillow to get through it all. ‘How are you doing that?’ they kept asking, ‘It looks like you’re pregnant for real.’
‘I am,’ I’d say, and keep right on moving.”
Career
“I should have been riding high when I got the part as Queenie in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I didn’t expect, really, to get the role in the first place, what with every black actress in the Northern Hemisphere vying for the part. When my manager, Vince, called to tell me the director, David Pincher, wanted to meet, I wasn’t really excited by the prospects of sitting in a cattle call of actresses scrapping for the job. Plus, the meeting fell on the day that I was hosting a garage sale at my place, and I was way more into hustling to sell my gently worn dresses, stilettoes, and other personal goodies to raise a little shopping cash for a trip I was taking to Italy than I was jockeying for the gig. I mean, I’d already set up shop: I had my dresses on mannequins and my jewelry and shoes neatly arranged on well-appointed tables, and even an area with entire ensembles configured for shoppers who may not have immediately seen the value of purchasing more than an item or two. I even had champagne and orange juice chilling in the fridge, and donuts, too, because sugar and mimosas make prospective buyers linger longer, which would only increase my bottom line. Vince’s repeated phone calls ordering me down to Fincher’s office were wrecking my garage sale flow.
‘But the meeting is going to fall in the middle of my sale,’ I insisted when Vince called me for what seemed like the tenth time. I ran my fingers over the flyers I’d printed up advertising the sale: one said SELLING EVERYTHING: FROM THE ROOTER TO THE TOOTER! ‘Besides, why are these people working on the weekend anyway? Don’t people take off on Saturdays? Can’t they meet with me on Monday?’
‘I don’t care how mnay outfits you have ready to sell,’ Vince said emphatically. ‘I need you to get over to Fincher’s place.’
Reluctantly, I sent out a mass email to my friends telling them that the sale was off and went to sleep mad about it.”
“Both Brad and Cate got millions. Me? With bated breath, I sat by the phone for hours, waiting for Vince to call and tell me the number that I thought would make me feel good: somewhere in mid six figures — no doubt a mere percentage of what Brad was bringing home to Angelina and their beautiful babies, but something worthy of a solid up-and-coming actress with a decent amount of critical acclaim for her work. Alas, that request was dead on arrival. ‘I’m sorry, Taraji,’ Vince said quietly when we finally connected. ‘They came in at the lowest of six figures. I convinced them to add a little more, but that’s as high as they’d go.’ There was one other thing: I’d have to agree to pay my own location fees while filming in New Orleans, meaning three months of hotel expenses would be coming directly out of my pocket. Insult, meet injury.”
