When your acting career begins before preschool, it's hard to nail down exactly
which role put you on the map. For actress Jurnee Smollett, this is definitely the case.
Born in 1986, the actress got her first on-screen role in a diaper campaign at just 10 months old.
The young Smollett then captured America's heart as Michelle Tanner's best friend
Denise on the ABC sitcom Full House, a role originally written for a little white girl,
according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Soon after, an 8-year-old Smollett joined her brothers and sisters in another ABC sitcom,
On Our Own, which only lasted one season. One of those siblings was former Empire star Jussie
Smollett, who was accused of faking a hate crime and falsely reporting it to the police in 2019,
a legal mess that has remained a shadow over the family.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter for a wide-ranging August 2020 interview,
Jurnee stood firm in supporting her brother, saying she believed his side of the story.
Smollett shared how the case is affecting their family and said,
"[It's] one of the most painful things my family's ever experienced — to love
someone as much as we love my brother, and to watch someone who you love that
much go through something like this, that is so public, has been devastating."
Jurnee Smollett's next major role after On Our Own placed her opposite Samuel L. Jackson as
the 10-year-old star of Eve's Bayou in 1997. The preteen actress had already
established herself as a big time star, but there was one route she did not ever go:
the Disney Channel. From Miley Cyrus to Hilary Duff, Shia LaBeouf, and many others,
Disney has birthed the careers of many actors and singers. But Smollett actually
turned down a potential Disney Channel show at the height of her child stardom. Why?
The answer is her mother. Janet Smollett was adamant about framing her daughter's
image as a serious and mindful actress growing up.
Janet Smollett decided Disney would not be the best fit for the young actress.
Smollett told The Hollywood Reporter that her mother would get into long arguments with her
agent, refusing to let her daughter take a job just because it paid well.
That mindfulness rubbed off on the young actress, as Jurnee Smollett has remained
protective of her image and what projects she gets involved with. She told The Hollywood Reporter,
"I'm very aware of the over-sexualization of the Black female body — this perverted
fascination that predates me — and so the notion
that I would ever contribute to that weighs very heavily on me."
The over-sexualization of Black women in Hollywood also contributed to the sexual
harassment that Smollett has faced growing up in the industry. She said:
"I don't know that I can confidently say that I worked on one job prior to
Lovecraft [Country] — from the time I was 12 on — where I hadn't been sexually harassed,
whether it was by an AD, a co-star, director [or] producer."
Smollett revealed that the harassment on one set was so blatant, she asked to be removed from the
project. Seeing this persistent attitude of harassment may be why she began volunteering
at Artists for a New South Africa at just the young age of 12. This meant volunteering to
teach sex-ed in Los Angeles schools, where Smollett would speak to kids her own age.
She recalls the experience being strange but necessary.
The kids she worked with would recognize her immediately, so she'd promise to
pose for pictures after the lessons were complete to keep them paying attention.
Since her days as a child actor, Smollett has had roles in series like Friday Night Lights,
True Blood, Underground and 2020's Lovecraft Country. She also had a
starring turn as Dinah Lance, also known as Black Canary, in Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey.
"You better get her back!"
And now she's putting the lessons she learned from her mother to good use,
as she's become a mother herself, giving birth to her son Hunter Zion Bell in 2016.
We can't wait to see what barriers she breaks through next.
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