Tracee Ellis Ross is an icon – and our favorite rich auntie

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2023

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tracee Ellis Ross is an icon. From playing the premiere Black bachelorette, Joan Carol Clayton, on Girlfriends to becoming America's mom as Bow Johnson on Black-ish, she's spent the past two decades portraying a paragon of Black womanhood on screen. More recently, Tracee's turned her focus toward uplifting the stories of real people – on her Hulu documentary Hair Tales, and with her new podcast, I Am America. Host Brittany Luse talks with Tracee about her long and varied career, how she tackles storytelling through documentary and what it means to have rich auntie energy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR.
0:06.5	I'm Brittany Loose.
0:07.8	And today, a conversation with someone I've been watching on screen for over two decades.
0:15.2	The one and only, Tracy Ellis Ross.
0:20.2	So you are so many people's internet friend in their head.
0:26.2	How many of us have grown up with you?
0:28.2	You're an icon for so many in that way.
0:30.3	I'm so nerve-wracking.
0:31.3	What's nerve-wracking about it?
0:33.1	You just said that word icon.
0:34.4	It was so funny.
0:35.4	I don't know if you noticed, but the other day I posted for my mom's birthday, the Essence
0:38.6	Cover, my first Essence Cover.
0:41.0	And it was with my mom.
0:42.0	It was in 2004.
0:43.0	That's almost 20 years ago.
0:45.4	And on the pictures, as the icon in the on Janut, I consider my mom an icon.
0:50.0	So it feels funny to hear somebody say that.
0:53.4	Tracy's mom, of course, is Motown superstar Diana Ross.
0:58.4	But despite her pedigree, Tracy is still so down to earth.
1:02.7	I first encountered her on the groundbreaking sitcom Girlfriends, which premiered in 2000.
1:08.8	Her character, Joan Clayton, represented the kind of woman I wanted to be.
	...

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