Chances are you've seen Rashida Jones, who's perhaps best known for her roles as Karen in
The Office and Ann Perkins in Parks and Recreation, pop up from time to time on
the small and big screen. But while her professional life may be public knowledge,
there's still a lot to discover about her personal life. Here's Rashida Jones' untold truth.
Before becoming the gorgeous star we know and love today, Rashida Jones had an awkward teenage phase
just like the rest of us. In an interview with The Guardian, Jones explained that she was hardly the
popular Regina George of her high school. Instead, she described herself as, quote, "a chubby nerd."
While Jones can laugh at her younger self now,
at the time it led her to pursue interests other than popularity and socializing. She shared:
"Nobody was trying to have sex with me,
so I had to find other things, like reading and being good at school."
But these early hobbies helped her to become the successful, driven woman she is today.
Rashida Jones' high school classmates must have thought she was going places,
as they voted her "most likely to succeed" in their graduating yearbook,
according to Entertainment Weekly. Jones attended The Buckley School in Los Angeles,
along with celebrity kids like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, according to Marie Claire.
The school also has plenty of notable Hollywood alumni, including Laura Dern and Nicole Richie.
It couldn't have been easy having such larger-than-life classmates
like Hilton and Kardashian. In an interview with the Independent,
Jones recalled riding the bus with them as a kid, saying:
"Can you imagine, being on a bus where two of the 10 people get famous for having sex tapes?"
We certainly can't imagine. Rashida Jones has clearly been surrounded
by celebrities her whole life but has kept a down-to-earth attitude.
One thing about being around so many celebrities is also becoming friends with some,
which is what happened to Rashida Jones. She even had a close relationship with the one and
only Michael Jackson when she was younger. Her father, record producer Quincy Jones,
was a prominent figure in the music world, so she was raised with Jackson as a close family friend.
Even though Jackson was 18 years older than Rashida Jones,
he still enjoyed pulling some hilarious, childish pranks on total strangers with her.
Describing one of her favorite memories with Jackson to Playboy, Jones recalled:
"Once, my sister, Michael, ­Emmanuel Lewis and I got in a car with Super Soakers and
went by a movie theater and supersoaked the hell out of people waiting in line.
They had no idea they'd just been supersoaked by the King of Pop."
Even though Jones is now an adult, it seems she hasn't grown out of her love of pranks.
In fact, she's even admitted that, quote,
"streaking through a large crowd" has always been her fantasy prank.
Growing up with two famous musical parents had an incredible influence on Rashida Jones.
While her father, Quincy, brought jazz, soul, R&B,
and classical music into the house, Jones says that it was her mother who was responsible for:
"The song she most remembers from when she was growing up."
Jones' mom, The Mod Squad and Twin Peaks actress Peggy Lipton,
was a major fan of the '70s blues band Steely Dan, particularly the song "Hey Nineteen."
In a 2012 interview with radio show All Things Considered,
Jones spoke about her deep love for the music her mom introduced her to. Jones said:
"It kind of opened me up to being a music nerd. Those guys are music nerds, and that's what's so
great about them. They like complex rhythms, and they're interested in the mathematics of music."
By now you know that Rashida Jones' parents, Quincy Jones and Peggy Lipton, are pretty famous.
But growing up with unjust criticism because of your parents interracial marriage can take its
toll. Her father being black and mother being white apparently led rapper Tupac Shakur to
make some scathing remarks about the couple's interracial marriage in 1993, according to GQ.
But Rashida Jones didn't sit back and take it. Although she was only 17,
she wrote an open letter in response to Tupac's comments. She wrote:
"Tupac's lyrics suggest that he uses music as an excuse to justify his stupidity and ignorance.
Where the hell would you be if Black people like him [Quincy Jones] hadn't
paved the way for you to even have the opportunity to express yourself?"
Jones wasn't afraid to voice her opinions and
stick up for the people she loved and talk about racial injustice.
Tupac and Jones ended up reconciling after. He even became close with the Jones family
and even dated Rashida's sister, Kidada, until his untimely death.
Rashida Jones realized she wanted to pursue acting when she was a teenager and learned that theater
could help with expressing herself. But becoming a full-time actor wasn't her first aspiration.
"What did you want to be when you were growing up?”
“I wanted to be the president and/or a judge and/or a lawyer."
She shared in Women's Health in 2008:
"That was never the plan! But I always wanted to pursue theater and my black cultural identity."
She claimed being in the play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow
Is Enuf, a 1976 play by Ntozake Shange that's a series of poetic monologues about black identity,
opened her eyes to how her passions could merge.
The experience was a momentous one for Jones, who described the play as, quote, "healing."
She went on to explain that it helped her to express her experience of coming from a range
of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Jones, who is black, Jewish, Irish, and Portuguese, shared:
"I do identify with being black, and if people don't identify me that way, that's their issue.
I'm happy to challenge people's understanding of what it looks like to be biracial."
After high school, Rashida Jones ended up going to Harvard for college.
While at Harvard, she toyed with the idea of becoming a lawyer,
but she ended up studying comparative religion and graduated in 1997.
According to The Harvard Gazette, her time at Harvard was pretty busy.
She was involved in the college's arts scene, taking part in the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic
Club. She was also a member of the Harvard Black Students Association.
She even served as the musical director of the Harvard Opportunes, a co-ed a cappella group.
In 2016, she returned to Harvard as a graduation ceremony speaker
and gave the grads some sage words of advice.
"Launching my writing and producing career felt like a milestone but more importantly,
I overcame my own compulsion to work within the system."
Calling her younger self at Harvard a staunch rule follower, she urged the
graduates to be themselves but they'd have to, quote, "break some rules to do that."
Rashida Jones is a naturally beautiful person, so unlike many of her Hollywood
contemporaries, Jones has never bought into the needles and fillers approach to beauty.
She has a much more natural and holistic approach. In an interview with Good Housekeeping,
she credited her mom for all of her best beauty practices, stating:
"She has always been holistic about beauty - she puts on sunblock, drinks a ton of water,
takes care of herself, meditates. I'm less strict, but I do meditate, eat well,
work out. And I love being in nature with no mirrors - just trees and a good sweat."
It seems that Jones is living, breathing proof of the age-old adage that being
healthy on the inside translates to being beautiful on the outside.
While some megastars love parading around town in trendy designer clothes with a face
of heavy makeup and professionally styled hair, Rashida Jones has a different approach to style.
In an interview in The Cut, she explained her understated style, saying:
"I'm a pretty modest dresser. I grew up wearing a uniform. I'm never happier than when I'm in a
suit or a button-down shirt. I feel so beautiful, elegant and sophisticated. Even with beauty stuff,
I like a really clean face. I know it's not the sexiest or what most people are going to like."
Jones is clearly a fan of the classic look. And it works well for her.
Jones elaborated about her stance on beauty,
explaining that she likes to keep things simple and natural:
"I like when people put their hair back in a tight bun. I like a dewy face,
lots of freckles so you could see everything coming out and maybe a really bright lip."
Before Rashida Jones became the household name that she is today because of her acting work,
she enjoyed a pretty exciting career in music. She provided
backing vocals for some tracks on Maroon 5's first two albums,
according to Vanity Fair. She described the experience to Good Morning America:
"I love music and I'm intimidated by it and want to be better at it, but whenever I get
a chance to do something like that where I can be involved, I will take the chance, for sure."
But Jones' music career didn't stop there.
She also contributed vocals on songs in the soundtracks for The Baxter
and The Ten. She even released the song, "Wanted to be Loved" with Daniel Ahearn.
Parks and Recreation fans are familiar with Rashida Jones.
The show aired on NBC from 2009 to 2015, amassing adoring fans for its smart satirical comedy
and lovable characters. Jones played Ann Perkins, a nurse who befriends Leslie Knope,
the eccentric central character played by Saturday Night Live legend Amy Poehler.
But many fans don't realize that Jones and Poehler share
a one-of-a-kind friendship in real life, too. In an adorable interview with Elle,
the two stars discussed their close friendship and affection for one another.
Poehler even described Jones as one of her closest friends. She gushed:
"It's so nice to be able to find a like-minded person who you really admire.
And who's your Homie."
Rashida Jones leads a private family life out of the public eye. Jones and her partner,
Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig, are famously private about their personal lives
and their child. They even kept her pregnancy a secret until after their baby was born,
amazing the entire entertainment industry with their crafty secrecy.
Us Weekly broke the baby news in September 2018, reporting that Jones and Koenig,
who first appeared to publicly confirm their relationship in January 2017,
welcomed their son, Isaiah Jones Koenig, into the world months earlier.
While the famous couple has always been private about their personal lives,
it was incredible that they managed to keep her pregnancy under wraps for the entire nine months!
We're impressed- that's some dedicated secret-keeping!
Rashida Jones has always realized the importance of standing up for
her cultural heritage as a woman with intersectional feminism.
“That's like, when you get into sex work and
classism and racism and the fact that all types of oppression are interrelated."
In a Refinery29 interview,
Jones delved into her feelings about feminism and the need for intersectionality:
"Feminism in this country has long been for white women. Even the suffragette movement excluded
black women. Feminism has to be for every woman, and if there's an experience you don't understand,
educate yourself. I think because I'm biracial, I have a unique perspective.
I am sometimes treated like a woman of color, sometimes not."
Jones told Refinery29 that sexism affects certain women differently depending on
their race and their cultural identity, and she understands that it becomes more
complicated when you don't have the privilege of being a white woman.
She further advised all women to stay open to learning so they can
understand all women from different circumstances.
If you know anything about Rashida Jones, you'll know that her father, Quincy Jones,
is a fairly impressive character. The music legend has had an epic career,
earning him 80 Grammy Award nominations and 28 Grammys, as of this writing.
It's clear that his daughter Rashida Jones is deeply proud of her father and his achievements
so much that she spent six years working on a documentary about his life and work called Quincy.
According to Deadline, Rashida Jones attended a Tribeca
Talks panel and talked about how making the film felt like:
"a destiny [she] had to fulfill for the family."
Jones has stated that it was the hardest project she'd ever done. The film includes
some very personal, sensitive moments, including scenes featuring her father lying unconscious in
a hospital bed during a health scare. It's no wonder she found the process difficult.
The film earned her a Grammy for best music film,
another award to add to the huge collection the Jones family has received.
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