(gentle music)
- Good morning, Elle.
Thanks for waking up with me.
I'm Quinta Brunson and we are in a hotel.
That's because I spend a lot of time in hotels
getting ready for press and traveling and going places
so this isn't that abnormal.
No, I don't technically want you in my home
but I think that this is a nice compromise.
My days are pretty interesting
so I'm gonna show you what waking up is like with me.
Come on, let's go. (jazz music)
Hello.
So getting ready in the morning to me
is about getting ready at night.
I use the Olay Retinol 24 collection
to take care of my skin at night.
I absolutely love it.
I was so happy they asked me
to be a spokesperson for it
because I actually like it a lot.
But the eye cream is important for me
because I got big eyes and I get big eye bags
and this eye cream kind of helps those go away.
The serum is nice just cause I love a good serum in the mix.
I don't even know really,
I don't know if serums work but I like them
and I think I see a difference.
The moisturizer is the most important part.
I love this moisturizer because when I go to sleep
I don't like going to put my head
on my pillow feeling sticky.
That really bothers me.
It doesn't let me sleep well.
This is not a sticky one.
It's very light. You don't need a ton of it.
Your skin feels moisturized.
But what I think is important about this
is you can tell the difference
in the morning with these products.
Like if you're wondering
why my skin looks really alive when I wake up,
it's because of this bad boy right here.
I wake up a lot at five o'clock in the morning
so it's easy to look tired
and it helps me not look tired.
First thing I do in the morning,
I wipe my face totally clean.
In the morning I like to start fresh again.
So I get myself a white washcloth,
I'm not a cleanser girl,
I feel like cleansers dry my skin out.
I like to maintain moisture
so the only thing I really use is a washcloth and water,
and makeup remover wipes 'cause I just have to,
I can't not use makeup remover.
But I wash my face completely, completely clean.
I don't wanna see any residue at all.
Then I come to this morning collection which I said,
this is so good at maintaining my skin at night.
This really changes the game in the morning.
This is the Olay vitamin C plus peptide 24 serum,
eye cream and moisturizer.
It's kind of like the same thing as my night routine
but just the morning version, and I don't know,
it just makes me look alive, which is important.
So we did what we had to do at night.
We did what we had to do in the morning.
So I kind of will take a scrunchy and pull my hair back
because I don't like to get my hair wet.
I want it out of my face
and I typically do that before I wash my face
so I can know what else I have to do and what have going on.
Depending on how my hair is,
I'll move to the Bread Hair Oil.
I like to put it on.
It feels like a really good coat over my hair.
I think that Bread, the line,
was specifically designed for curly and kinky hair.
As you can see, my hair is not like that right now
but that's just because I do a lot
and sometimes I have to have it straightened and a wig.
But right now I don't have to technically use these.
But this is so good for natural hair.
And then this is the Bread Hair Cream
which is also for curly and kinky hair.
It defines the curls in a really good way.
There's so many curl defining conditioning creams out there
it's hard to really stand out
and the Bread Curling Cream does.
So I kind of put that in my hair
just to let it take and set
and then I'll move on to my other things.
So you have to moisturize people
and you can do that with the Brazilian Bum Bum Cream.
I don't know if this is specifically for butts,
I always thought bum bum meant butts,
but I don't know why they call it this.
Anyway, you can put this on your body as regular lotion,
any part of your body, not just the butt,
probably not the face, but just moisturize yourself.
I think it's important.
I love a good lotion.
I live in LA, it's dry out here
and my skin is constantly craving hydration
the moment I get out of the shower
I need to hydrate my skin immediately.
This smells good and it's great, I just love it
so I'll kind of do my whole body with this.
After that, I kind of move on to getting the face ready.
So today I'm going to do some press stuff.
I'm gonna stop by the Warner Brothers lot,
which is where I work, to do some writing
and I'm going to hit my set,
where I'm not on set today but I will be doing
all the other parts of my job.
So, I like to give myself a little mascara, a little...
I want them to think that I really really care and I do.
So this 24 hour brow gel from Benefit Cosmetics
is really, really great.
I love this because I have unruly brows.
So, this is fantastic because it's not like
I want super defined brows,
but I do want them to be orderly,
I don't want them to step outta line
and my hairs tend to just think they're at a party
and you're not, you need to get in line
and that's what this brow gel does.
You can just get hairs right into place.
It's also great for if you're trying
to grow back your eyebrows after
someone threaded them too much
and you asked them not to, but they did anyway.
Not speaking from personal experience.
After that, I'll kind of move on mascara.
That's my other go-to.
Mascara makes me feel like I put on a full face of makeup
even if I didn't, it just enhances my eyes
and makes me feel like I put some effort in.
My whole thing is trying to make people think
I put a whole lot of effort in when I really did not.
I think that's kind of my MO.
I love Pat McGrath Labs.
I'm so happy with their success
and I love supporting Pat McGrath.
After this, I'll move on to my Anastasia pencil.
This is a great brow pencil.
Sometimes I do just the eyebrow gel, like I said,
but other times I just want to kind of
define my brows a little bit more,
make them a little bit bolder.
I love these because they have the triangle brow tip
which makes it really easy
to kind of get my eyebrows in shape.
I'm not the best with defining eyebrows into another shape.
I just work with what I got.
So, big fan of that, and like other eyebrow pencils,
it has this brush on the end, which we love a good brush.
Yeah, actually I don't think eyebrow pencils
should come out brushes now.
So I'm really upset when that happens
but that's why this is one of my faves.
Moving on to the Pat McGrath lip gloss.
This is a beautiful one.
I don't like a lot of color on my lips.
I think it just is too much for my face.
But what I do look like is something that looks like,
just a little bit of an enhancement to my natural lip color
and that, as you can see, is this Pat McGrath lip gloss.
Lip gloss is another one of those staples for me.
If I have lip gloss on and mascara, I mean,
I just feel like you can't tell me anything
and that I have done a really good job
at showing up for work.
It's very pretty too, such a pretty color.
Ugh, my Marc Jacobs Daisy perfume.
This is my staple.
Everyone who knows me knows this is what I smell like.
I get really bothered when another girl
smells like it near me, I want to fight her.
Just kidding, but a lot of people smell like this
so I'm not unique in that.
I'm putting it on, you guys can't even smell this,
but I'm just putting it on for fun 'cause I can.
It's just my favorite scent in the world.
All right, this is one of my favorite products
that not many people know about.
My makeup artist, Renee, put me onto this.
This is the Mally Evercolor Poreless Face Defender.
It's incredible.
I kind of call it the magic powder.
It's not a powder at all.
It's really a balm.
When you usually would just powder your face
to get the stuff to set and the pores to go away.
This is such a cool, well it's a balm,
but kind of a jelly that you use instead
and it's mattifying but it's also glowy,
so you don't get that chalky look
you can get with a lot of powders.
Or maybe it's just me 'cause I have trouble applying powders
but if you have trouble with powders, like I do,
you can use this instead.
And it just like calms everything down.
It's really good.
I'm just doing it for fun now.
But yeah, I really feel like a lot of people
should know about this one,
or don't because then you'll buy it
and I won't be able to get it, so nevermind.
Pretend you didn't hear about that.
So that's kind of what I do in the bathroom.
And then I get the move in
into the rest of my work day. (upbeat music)
So, I am in a hotel but I still like to sit
and have my coffee, and I love having hotel coffee.
I think it just tastes better.
There's nothing factual about that or scientific,
that's just how I feel.
But I'm gonna go in here and see what kind of coffee I want.
See what plethoras of flavors they have.
This is a mystery flavor
and we're gonna see what it tastes like.
We actually have one of these in the makeup trailer now.
I haven't used it yet, but it makes great coffee.
So if I start bouncing on the walls after this just know.
Was it off the walls? On the walls?
I don't really need this coffee but I'm gonna do it anyway.
But I do that and then it's a. (coffee machine buzzing)
Coffee.
A lot of times when I don't have
that much time in the morning I try to wake up,
take a shower and then I have maybe
in a half an hour to get ready.
But the main thing I like to do is stretch.
I try to factor in five minutes to give myself a good
touch the toes stretch, stretch my arms.
The cameramen on my show actually showed me
some really good stretches that I love to do.
I can show you one if it's not too extra.
You kind of grab to your forearm right here,
you pull, you put the neck this way.
It gives you such a good stretch in the morning.
I think stretching is important no matter what you're doing
because you're kind of getting your blood flowing,
your circulation going,
you're stretching out any stress you may have,
of which there's a ton of in this life.
So stretching is just really important to me.
It makes me feel energetic.
And doing it first thing in the morning
feels meditative to me.
I get to think about things I probably wouldn't think about
if I weren't stretching, so I love doing that.
Once my coffee is done, I grab some cream and sugar,
'cause I don't drink it black because I'm not a psycho
and then I like to get to my emails.
I try to handle as many emails as I can before I get to work
because once I get to work, it's just nothing but work.
So if I can alleviate some of that before I get there, I do.
So I head to the couch to get my emails done.
The work I kind of have to do this morning
is going through my emails. (whimsical music)
My emails contain stuff about casting,
call sheets for the following day,
one liners for each scene that's gonna be happening,
catching up on press emails for my PR,
sometimes it's about what kind of prop I want to on set,
set dressing for something, catching up on a script.
A lot of times I use the morning time to read a script
that was sent to me the night before
so that I'm able to give my notes on it,
possibly assist in the rewrite of that script.
It's just a lot of using that time in the morning
to catch up on things that happened the day before.
And right now I'm working on the second season
of "Abbott Elementary." (jazz music)
We are in the middle of filming.
We just finished filming our sixth episode of the season,
but we are in the process of writing
our 12th episode of the season,
and we have 22, so a long way to go.
So I always try to do my best and help with my show
where I can because it's my show and I love it
and I want it to turn out amazing,
and I still have trouble, I'm very hands on
so it's a lot of emailing all the time.
But I love it and I work with great wonderful people
who make the job easier than it should be.
So, thanks for waking up with me, Elle.
As I said before, I have a lot of emails
so I really should get to them.
But thank you for spending this time with me.
But now if you would kindly leave my hotel home
I'd appreciate that.
Thank you. (jazz music continues)