school. But it was Debbie Allen—she portrayed the dance teacher, Lydia Grant—who, for me, stole the movie with one scene, proving that there is no such thing as a small role. So naturally, when she was on television every week, I’d rush and finish up my homework and any other chores my mother laid out for me so that I could be front and center when the opening sequence flashed across the screen, and then I’d stand there transfixed, waiting to see Debbie with that huge stick in her hand, stalking menacingly around her dance students, sneering her warning in her young charges’ faces. Mesmerized, I’d say the lines right along with her: “You want fame? Well fame costs! And right here is where you start paying—in sweat!”
You better believe I wore out that mirror at my grandmother’s house that summer, walking in circles with an imaginary stick in my hand, repeating the line with that same signature snarl. (Years later, in a season-two episode of Empire, I would pay homage to Debbie by channeling that moment in a scene in which I used a similar stick and attitude to gather together a three-member singing group looking to make a splash on Cookie’s burgeoning record label; I hope I inspired some acting hopefuls in the same way that Debbie inspired me.) Unlike my favorite actress at the time, I wasn’t saying that line to a bunch of impressionable kids when I was leaning into that mirror as a child; I was inhaling the sentiment for my own inspiration, because by then, I’d caught the acting bug so thoroughly, so completely, that I could not envision myself doing anything else but what my favorite actresses of the time were doing: making the masses laugh, relate, feel something. Entertainers like Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball teleported themselves into my living room every week, pulling out the most ludicrous actions and wittiest words to make me remember them. To want to be them. I can still feel the workout my abdomen got from the roaring belly laughs Lucille coaxed out of me with that I Love Lucy episode in which, at the start of her job at the candy factory, she stuffs her cheeks with chocolate in a desperate attempt to keep up with the conveyor belt of confections whizzing by her. Similarly, I can’t shake the look of disgust on Lucy’s face in the episode in which she rolls up her pant legs, steps into a barrel of grapes, and feels the fruit squishing between her toes. Watching Carol Burnett try desperately to smother her laughter in the middle of a funny scene in her variety show gave me an aspiration: to get lost in pretending to be someone else.
This was a skill that I began to hone in an acting class at the Kennedy Center, right around the time Debbie Allen was on the big and small screen, turning me out. My father’s older sister, Norma, and my godmother, Brenda, paid for me to go to this particular weekend arts program—in part because they knew I was interested in becoming a performer, but also because my mother had to work weekends and needed a safe place to send me to while she put in her hours. It took a village to get me up on that stage, but only seconds for me to fall in love with everything about being there: the collaboration with my fellow students; the encouragement from the instructors; the excitement of creating stories, memorizing the lines, blocking our places on the sets we created; the smell of and the bigness of the room. I especially craved the attention I got—the applause extended to me when our performances were over. I’d look up and see my entire family, all the way in the back of the room, hooting and hollering my name as I took my bows. They were the perfect audience—egging me on and making me believe that being an actress was really possible. My father was my biggest cheerleader. He would say to me consistently and loudly, like a corner man hyping up a prizefighter in the heat of the ninth round, “Taraji, you already got the glory. You’ve already collected your Oscar. Right now you’re just going through the motions. Stay on your path. You’re the greatest actor alive. That’s how you walk. Walk in that.”
I recognize now how important this was to my development as an actress, even at that tender age. After all,