My First Cover Story with Bianca Lawson (Almost forgot I was a writer)
Source: Beast Williams for HelloBeautiful
If you’ve been hanging around my corner of the internet for a while, you may know that Hello Beautiful was my first writing and editor job. HB taught me everything I know about proper sentence structure, grammar, and how to engage your audience via storytelling. So this feels like a real full circle moment to be sharing with you that I have written my first cover story for Hello Beautiful.
I had the great fortune to chat with the incredible Bianca Lawson recently and I am excited to share with a few snippets from the cover story I wrote after our conversation. Take a peek below.
“Whether she’s playing the delightfully mean friend on Sister, Sister, the rowdy ex-girlfriend on Save The Last Dance, or the controversial bisexual girl in town on Pretty Little Liars, Bianca Lawson has always served us peak “cool Black girl.” After so many years of bringing high schoolers to life on our TV screens, many of us perceive her as our eternal teenager. But her most recent role on Queen Sugar as Darla Sutton shows Lawson in the full bloom of womanhood and all the complexities and experiences that come with that journey. She has tugged at our heart strings for six seasons in a role that has quickly become one of her most beloved and treasured characters to date.
One thing is for certain: When art mirrors life it can be both unnerving and transformative—and Darla has changed Bianca.
“You know all those episodes where [Darla] was depressed — I’ve struggled with that my whole life but it was never something I would talk about or express to anyone,” Lawson tells HelloBeautiful. “Through her, I could sort of just let the guard down. I think it has been good for me.”
Coincidently, we both showed up to our Zoom date with fresh faces and no interest in the upkeep that pre-COVID norms once required and expected of women. Laughing about what we once did for beauty’s sake pre-pandemic breaks up the awkwardness that often joins strangers in conversations and we chatted easily. Every interview with Bianca that I’ve read started with questions about her anti-aging secrets. The pleasantries always begin like, “Oh my gosh, I cannot believe you’re 40 blah blah blah.” So I crossed that question off my list to avoid redundancy. Also, I’m a 44 year old Black woman and I know the answer to the age conundrum: aging backwards is our thing. And it’s very clear that Bianca, like many Black women, is one of God’s favorites. We both aggressively nod at our similarities and issue our condolences to the rest of the world and hope that the odds are forever in their favor as well. We laugh about it; actually, it’s a firm three-minute cackle. And then we bat a few compliments to each other like Black women of respectable auntie age do when they are catching up.”
READ THE FULL COVER STORY HERE
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