Spellbinding
With
Yara Shahidi
Best known for her breakout role in Black-ish, actor, activist and all-round Hollywood force YARA SHAHIDI talks to HANNA PHIFER about the award-winning show’s rewarding legacy, broadening her horizons, and why her next role, in Peter Pan & Wendy, has truly given her wings…
Yara Shahidi has often hoped she would one day find herself in a fairy tale. “I’ve always wanted to get into the world of fantasy,” the 22-year-old shares on an early New York morning. “As an actor, it is a fun challenge to find a way to make something still feel real when nothing around you is real.”
On the subject of fantasy-turned-reality, in just a few hours Shahidi will be on a flight to Paris for Haute Couture Fashion Week. Right now, however, we’re discussing taking on the character of Tinker Bell in the forthcoming Peter Pan & Wendy, the latest in a long line of Peter Pan adaptations and live-action remakes.
“I mean, obviously it’s incredible to be given the opportunity to play such an iconic character, but, at the same time, I had a lot of questions,” Shahidi says on getting the call to play the role of the spunky fairy. “What’s gonna make this rendition different? What’s the goal of it?”
“I love the fact that I got to be in a PROJECT that centers on female FRIENDSHIP, and on connections that carry us through our LIVES outside of just the romantic ones”
Constructing an updated interpretation of the part was a collaborative process between the actor and the movie’s director, David Lowery. Shahidi wanted to incorporate all of what makes Tinker Bell the beloved character that she is, while also bringing something new. A starting point involved figuring out how she would move in the motion-capture suit, which led to her studying clips of 1920s dancer Josephine Baker, who she describes as having “really exaggerated” but “effortless” movements.
“I mean, who knows when people see it whether they’re gonna [notice] all these small references,” Shahidi says. “But for me, as an actor, it was helpful and exciting to be able to build all these references [for] Tinker Bell.”
The role is just one on a thrilling roster of projects on Shahidi’s slate, as her career enters a new phase. For nearly a decade, she has been widely known as Zoey Johnson, her breakout part as the cool older daughter in ABC’s hit sitcom Black-ish – which later spawned the Freeform spin-off series Grown-ish, following Zoey’s journey through college. As of last year, however, both Shahidi and her character reached a similar seminal moment when they put their caps and gowns on and graduated – Johnson from Cal U, Shahidi from Harvard, where she studied in the university’s Social Studies and African American departments.
“I’m excited to find roles that just expand from Grown-ish and put me in a different space,” she says of looking to her next chapter. “I’ve had so much fun as Zoey that I’m, like, there’s no need to recreate that experience.”
“I came about in a TIME where the term ‘activist’ was really CATCHY. And so, at 14, I suddenly had articles [calling me] ‘YARA the activist’ and I was, like, ‘Oh, OK’”
Part of broadening her resumé includes creating 7th Sun Productions, the production company she runs alongside her mother, Keri. The name was inspired by writer W.E.B. Du Bois, who said that Black men were the “seventh son” in his foundational text, The Souls of Black Folks. Shahidi changed the spelling from ‘son’ to ‘sun’ because she wanted to “degender” the name – and to represent the breadth of the Black experience.
“Our content is unabashedly about this experience we have as Black folks – and it is about not the trauma that we carry, but our day-to-day life and being able to see us on screen in the plethora of ways we know we exist in the world,” she says.
One of her next projects is a comedy she’s starring in and exec-producing for Amazon, Sitting in Bars with Cake, an adaptation of Audrey Shulman’s book of the same name. Shahidi got to work alongside her real-life friend, Grand Army’s Odessa A’zion, who played her best friend in the film. “I think our friendship grew so much within the span [of filming the movie],” Shahidi says. “It’s based on a true story and a true friendship. I love the fact that I got to be in a project that centers on female friendship, and on these connections that carry us through our lives outside of just the romantic ones.”
“I have FRIENDS who are grassroots ACTIVISTS and I know what that work looks like. I have a deep ADMIRATION for that work”
Another forthcoming project is Extrapolations for Apple TV+, in which she appears alongside a star-studded cast that includes Meryl Streep, Gemma Chan and Forest Whitaker. It’s an anthology series of interconnected stories, exploring the topic of climate change. “My character is representative of a lot of the youth climate action,” Shahidi shares. “She’s a cool touchpoint to reflect all this incredible youth activism.”
Activism is a label that Shahidi is intimately familiar with. She has long used her platform to speak out on global issues, and particularly causes that relate to her identity as a Black-Iranian person. She has worked with organizations on increasing the youth vote in elections, given a TED Talk on the perpetuation of Black stereotypes in the media, spoken out against police violence, and passionately supported the uprisings in Iran in recent months. Shahidi credits becoming politicized at such a young age with having grown up in a very socially aware family, but she says that the public’s engagement with her beliefs took time to adjust to.
“I came about in a time where the term ‘activist’ was really catchy. And so, at 14, I suddenly had articles [calling me] ‘Yara the activist’ and I was, like, ‘Oh, OK’,’” she says.
Shahidi has cited James Baldwin for years as a thinker who has shaped her world view, but, since going to Harvard, she says she has learned greatly from other renowned Black figures, such as Angela Davis and Cornel West, both of whom Shahidi now counts as mentors. After attending a lecture of West’s, Shahidi decided to take classes in person at the university. “Dr. West is just such a brilliant lecturer that I was, like, ‘Oh, I have to be here right now,’” she recalls.
Her views of herself as an activist have evolved since she first rose to prominence. “We’ve seen so many of my peers who are putting their literal bodies on the front lines to stand up for what’s right, to protest regularly, to make sure that our voices are heard,” she says. “I’ve always used the very clunky term ‘socially engaged human’, because I have friends who are grassroots activists and I know what that work looks like. I have a deep admiration for that work, [for] being on the front lines regularly, being community organizers, so I’ve always felt like there is some distinction. I’m trying to work in tandem and in parallel to those efforts that are happening in real life, but would I classify it as the same thing, me going to set and somebody organizing a movement? Not necessarily.”
For her final dissertation, she chose to study writer Sylvia Wynter, in part because she was drawn to Wynter’s criticism of the media. “Because she started as a dancer and as a playwright, she has this deep reverence for what art can do, without shying from the hard conversations of, like, not all art is inherently impactful,” Shahidi says. “Not all art is moving towards something, but if you choose to take it on as both an academic and an entertainer, there are things that we can be doing… [to explore] ideas that [open] the gateway to a future space.”
In examining how art can be used as a vehicle for progress, we move on to the impact of Black-ish in a media landscape that has been shifting since the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement – looking to what it could mean for the future of representation on screen.
“The legacy of Black-ish that I personally like the most is the butterfly effect of opportunity; where every writer went and where the other producers went, and how then we ended up getting to have both shows [Black-ish and Grown-ish],” she considers. “They were head-on tackling what’s happening in the news, tackling these different perspectives of what it is to be a family that carries this racial identity, that carries this culture, that’s trying to figure out what this culture means for all of them individually.”
“Our content is unabashedly about this EXPERIENCE we have as Black folks – and it is about not the trauma that we carry, but our day-to-day LIFE and being able to see us on screen in the plethora of ways we know we EXIST in the world”
“You have writers behind so many of our other favorite moments in Black media that have now taken a step to be less about… what it is to be a Black family and more about ‘here’s a slice of life, here’s a peek into a world that we get to explore’,” she continues, citing the examples of Atlanta, Insecure and Abbott Elementary. “So that is what I’m most proud of, because we get to exist in a world… where [now] we turn on the TV and look at different parts of our experience.”
It’s an uplifting legacy to leave the show with. Now, as Shahidi embarks on the next chapter, her passion, drive and purpose promise it will be just as inspiring.
Peter Pan & Wendy is coming soon to Disney+
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