Jodie Turner-Smith 'had a lot of resistance' about being a parent
Jodie Turner-Smith "had a lot of resistance" to becoming a parent before she and husband Joshua Jackson had their daughter Janie.
Jodie Turner-Smith "had a lot of resistance" to becoming a parent.
The 'Murder Mystery 2' actress has two-year-old daughter Janie with husband Joshua Jackson but she admitted she had a "mini pause" when they discussed starting a family because she was concerned about raising a mixed race child who'd have different "experiences" that she had had.
She told the new issue of ELLE UK magazine: "It’s interesting because I had a lot of resistance to becoming a mother and, throughout my life, I always said if I were to have children, I wanted to have Black, Black babies so that I could affirm them as children with the love that I felt I needed to have been affirmed with by the outside world.
"Then I fell in love with my husband and we talked about having kids. I did have this mini pause, where I was like, “She’s going to be walking through the world not only having an experience that I did not have, but looking like people that, in a way, I’d always felt a little bit tormented by.”
But Jodie thinks having her daughter has helped to teach her more about colourism.
She added: "Now that I’ve got this little, tiny, light-skinned boss, I feel like it’s the universe teaching me lessons. I’ve been given a daughter who looks this way to heal my own conversations around colourism."
The 36-year-old actress thinks raising children is a "big job" and she's determined for her daughter to be as "real" as possible.
She said: "I love this little girl so much. She’s so funny. It’s a big job to prepare children for the world. The best thing that we can do is let them touch the earth and be grounded and real – as real as one can be when you have the level of privilege that obviously my child has.
"I’m not acting like she’s not a nepo baby. But I worked damn hard to have a nepo baby!"
For more from Jodie, visit https://www.elle.com/uk/jodieturnersmith. The May issue of ELLE UK is on sale from 30 March.
