‘Black Beauty Roster’ Trains White Execs On Black Hair

In 2019, Refinery29 posted an article called Black Actors Are Getting Huge Roles In Hollywood, But Still Doing Their Own Hair outlining the “terrifying and high-anxiety” inducing reality of actors sitting in trailers on sets with artists unfamiliar with doing Black hair and makeup. That year, other Black actresses, including Natasha Rothwell‏, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Gabrielle Union, took to Twitter (now X) to discuss H&MU horror stories using the hashtag #ActingWhileBlack. A year later, Kat Graham went viral when she broke down crying during a video for Vogue about having to hide her natural hair for every role she had ever played (including The Vampire Diaries). “One day I wish I can play a character that I actually look like,” she said through tears. When I interviewed You star Shalita Grant in 2021, she talked about starting her own natural hair care line because her 4C hair was ruined on the set of NCIS: New Orleans. “They were committed to me hiding my natural hair, even though a curlier texture would have made a lot more sense in New Orleans,” she told me. “We were literally spending hours in the trailer to try to make my hair something that it wasn’t… when I left that show, I had a bald spot in the center of my head.” Graham went viral again just last year when she got emotional in makeup pro Danessa Myricks’ chair because she was finally working with a Black artist. And earlier this year, Academy-Award winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph told me she had to fight “tooth and nail” for authentic Black hair and makeup in The Holdovers.