Tracee Ellis Ross Is on a 'Juicy and Joyful' Journey

In 2022, actor and entrepreneur Tracee Ellis Ross will get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The accolade comes 40 years after her mother, music legend Diana Ross, received the same honor, and it’s not something Ross ever envisioned for herself. Then again, neither was being a CEO, and yet, she’s accomplished both. Ross’ first major television role came in 2000 on the sitcom Girlfriends, and it was during the show’s eight-year run that she realized she wasn’t alone in having a complicated relationship with her hair, and that there was a huge gap in the market for curly, coily and tight-textured hair. Like many entrepreneurs, she was met with repeated rejections after writing up a beauty brand pitch in 2008. “‘Black girl magic’ did not exist [then],” Ross says. “The natural hair revolution … did not exist. When I came out of Girlfriends, there were still people saying to me, ‘Why don’t we put heat on your hair?’ So there was not this fertile ground for this idea.” Nearly a decade later, when she was starring on ABC’s hit comedy Black-ish, Ross decided to “stop looking for somebody else to do it for me,” she says, and instead find her own chemist, invest her own money and start her own hair care line, Pattern Beauty, which launched in 2019. The brand, which now offers nearly 40 formulas, tools and accessories, will release new products later this year and is eyeing international distribution. Meanwhile, Ross says Black-ish, which was recently renewed for its eighth and final season, helped start a national conversation about Juneteenth, the date commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S. that recently became a federal holiday, and redefined the term “sitcom wife.” She also honed her own political voice during this time, which led to a hosting gig at the Democratic National Convention in August 2020. But even without Black-ish, Ross' plate remains full. For starters, there’s Pattern and a multiyear deal with ABC Signature, which she recently signed under her production company, Joy Mill Entertainment, to produce “multilayered stories that reframe assumptions about how people see themselves and each other” for linear TV and streaming. She will serve as the executive producer of the upcoming animated comedy Jodie, a spinoff of MTV’s Daria, in which she’ll also voice the title character, and is producing a podcast, I Am America, which will debut in early 2022 and highlight people of color and their contributions to their communities. Ross is ready for anything, it seems—except a bucket list. “So many of my dreams have come true—dreams I never thought actually would come into fruition,” she says, “Pattern being one of them. A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I didn't even dream that part, and look what's happened. I'm only 48. There's a whole lifetime ahead of me.” Ross sat down with Adweek to discuss celebrating authentic beauty, how she has evolved during Black-ish and her "juicy and joyful" life. (This interview has been condensed and edited.) Adweek: What did you want to be when you grew up? Was it a given you’d go into show business?Tracee Ellis Ross: It wasn't a given. I started out wanting to be a singer, and I let that go pretty quickly. And then I wanted to be a fashion editor. I modeled for a bit. It was during my modeling I discovered I love the captive audience, which is not what most people get from modeling. I love being in connection with people … like when a laugh gets shared with other people. I was always the class clown and really silly, so it was an authentic and natural progression for me into this world. I think the part that has not been expected is how much I love being a CEO. It makes sense in terms of the kind of mind that I have, but that was not something I dreamt of for myself. In a video for Pattern, you talk about how you were at odds with your hair when you were younger. At what point did you realize you yourself could fill an unmet need in the hair care market?My public life started when there was no social media, so there were no easy connections to those that were watching me. I went into a beauty-supply shop on Wilshire [Boulevard in Los Angeles] where I would buy a lot of the hair products I liked, and the stylist came out and said, “Oh my god, girl, you have no idea the amount of people that come in here and say, 'I want my hair like that girl on Girlfriends.'" It was the first moment I realized there's other people like me that are struggling. That was the first seed for me. A Trailblazer's Trailblazers "Particularly with Pattern, [Black hair care pioneer] Madam C.J. Walker's story has been incredibly inspiring to me, particularly knowing [how long] it took me to get Pattern off the ground and thinking of what she was able to do in the face of so much racism and sexism just blows my mind and … the way she took what she made and uplifted others and continued to pave a better space for Black people, I find incredibly inspiring. In my acting career, Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett will forever be the two that kind of marked my sensibility, a combination of style and roll-in-the-mud funny and not being afraid of what you look like and glamour all mixed into one. The two of them were absolute trailblazers in terms of their business minds and how they created and produced and were in charge of the shows they made blows my mind again, particularly in the time they came up. And, politically, I look at Shirley Chisholm and now Ayanna Pressley [and] women like Nancy Pelosi, who continue to break barriers, but also, despite what the world seems to expect of them, continue to not only name and put language to things that need to be changed, but also language to what they should be changed to. … The ability to articulate and see beyond what is and actually have a vision for what would be better is something that I am inspired by all the time." —Tracee Ellis Ross I had another experience during Girlfriends where I was at the Essence Music Festival and someone came up to me and said, “You're on TV—you're representing Black people. Why don't you get your hair done?” And it was one of the other moments where I realized there weren't many Black women wearing their hair in its natural form. Yes, that was happening across the globe and through time, but it wasn't reflected in media. And so I started to realize I was doing something that in the public eye wasn't happening on a regular basis. And because of my job and the life I had, I had access to all of these products. And still, I was hunting for products. That started to build the idea, and over the years, it just got clearer and clearer and clearer—the realization the market had a real gap—that I was certainly not the only one and that we all had become our own best experts in our bathroom because not only did the standard of beauty not mirror our beauty back to us, but also the industry did not see us as the million-, billion-, trillion-dollar purchasing power that this vast community is. There was so much left on the table, both in terms of mirroring our beauty back to us and creating products that were actually developed and designed specifically for curly, coily and tight-textured hair that it just seamlessly started to grow from there. What was the process of creating Pattern like?At the agency I was with as an actor, there was an agent that did branding and marketing, so I went and talked to her. She was the beginning of what would be very many nos and very many naysayers and very many people who did not understand what I would have to offer and why anyone would need another shampoo line, particularly from an actress. I wrote my first hair care brand pitch right when Girlfriends finished in 2008. I had a manager at the time who said, “Oh, my god, I get it. You want everybody to have your hair. We should do a line of wigs!” I said, “Wait, what? That’s actually the exact opposite of what I'm saying.” Every no I got, every pathway I took that didn't pan out, I would get clearer and more specific. So by the time I had gotten worn out with the journey, I realized perhaps I—now having more money and more of a platform, now the fact The New York Times was writing articles about the natural hair movement—that I should go and try and find my own chemist, put my own money into it and create the goop and just do what I wanted to do. And that was when I had a clear idea, brand promise and mission of the company to meet the needs of the curly, coily-type texture community, to be an active space that is centered around Black beauty and celebrates authentic beauty. Pattern’s tagline is 'Juicy and joyful.' Pattern’s tagline is “Juicy and joyful.” What does that mean to you?I had what I was calling my hair bible. It was all of the things that I had dreamed, said and written down in the 10-year journey that were expressions of what I wanted the company to be. And “juicy and joyful” was one I often used to describe what I wanted these products to offer people in their hair. It's also one of the ways I describe my own life. And so it became the cornerstone of what is the experience of Pattern hair: that it is juicy, as in hydrated and moisturized, and joyful, as in your curls are bouncing and springy and zig-zaggy and coily. Let’s talk about the other big project in your life right now: Black-ish. In his announcement about the final season, creator Kenya Barris said, “It's rare to get to decide when your show will come to an end.” Why is this the right time to end the show?I just watched the Friends reunion, and they described what the elevator pitch was for Friends—that it was a show about people that are in that time of life when their friends are their family. And so, I think so much of what determines the end of the show is when the anchor of what the show is about—you've answered that question. And I think we've done that so beautifully on Black-ish. It's not like anything is left on the table. And to be at the end and be able to say that, so that you can walk into it and enjoy every last drop of it, is really special. I did not get that on Girlfriends, and I feel really excited about walking into this final moment with everybody. How have you evolved since Black-ish debuted in 2014?I think so much of my political voice developed and strengthened during my time on Black-ish, [including] my equity work at Ulta, but also carrying that into other corporate and retail spaces. Black-ish and being a part of an American family that was in the fabric of American television, I think, is one of the things along with my political and civically engaged voice that opened up the ability for me to host the second night of the DNC. I think Black-ish and the subject matter that we tackle, and my feminist voice and my political voice and my cultural acumen, were honed on our show. As we developed stories and worked them as a cast and figured out what we were actually trying to say—needed to say, how we wanted to say it—was a place where I was able to sharpen my teeth. Ross' Best of Black-ish "I have a particular love of Mother Nature, the episode about postpartum depression, that I just thought was an incredibly written episode—I had never seen that subject matter handled in that way on television, let alone on a comedy, and I thought it was really beautifully done. I loved our Juneteenth episode. I think it was part of what pushed the hands of turning it into an actual national holiday and has opened up so much awareness about Juneteenth and things that have been a part of American culture, but, unfortunately, only Black people were aware of. And that episode, also the fact that it involves singing and dancing and choreography and all of us—it was such a great experience while we were doing it. It was so much fun. Also 'Being Bow-Racial' would be my third favorite, which was the episode that started to explore Bow’s mixed heritage and her family life and sort of gave birth to Mixed-ish." —Tracee Ellis Ross What do you think the show's legacy will be?I hope the show's legacy is you can very easily see an American family through the face and the beingness of Black people the same way, historically, we have had to see an American family and identify as anyone who is not white and see ourselves in that. … I think Juneteenth is a part of the legacy of Black-ish and the subject matter that we've tackled on the show, but I think the legacy of the show will be the humor we leave, the sense of what does it look like to raise children and share with them what is important to you and also let them be who they are? And then lastly, I think the legacy around expanding our understanding and redefining what a sitcom woman is—that being a sitcom woman does not mean "sitcom wife." Your identity as a woman in a half-hour comedy does not have to be only in relationship or context to your husband, but can be a whole woman who has a career, is a wife, is a mother, is a friend. What do you hope to pass along to people who look to you as a trailblazer?I think to pass along this idea that the journey is not about how you are seen, but how you see. And, particularly as a Black woman, that we are often so encumbered by all of the ideas about us that we have to posture and make our way through that we can lose sight of what it is we want to be contributing to the world. I would hope my own journey offers a launching pad to discover their own unique journey … whether as an entrepreneur or an artist or just a human, that there is another person out in the world that has offered the example of: You can do it your way, and you can do it joyfully. And you can make those choices for yourself despite what others want and expect of you. Check out all of Adweek's Women Trailblazers here.

Women Trailblazers

Tracee Ellis Ross Is on a 'Juicy and Joyful' Journey to Celebrate Authentic Beauty

The Black-ish star and daughter of Motown royalty has forged her own path

Lisa Lacy

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