Back in 2015, anybody watching the Screen Actors Guild Awards red carpet was left with a severe case of second-hand embarrassment following a seriously awkward moment involving Rashida Jones.
For context, Rashida is biracial: her dad is the legendary music producer Quincy Jones, who is Black, and her mom is actor Peggy Lipton, who is Jewish.
And in a recent interview with the New Yorker, Rashida admitted that she wasn’t in the best mood when the whole thing went down, which may explain her blunt reaction.
“You could have said, ‘Have you not heard of my famously Black dad?’” the interviewer then pointed out, to which Rashida replied: “I know. As much as I might feel confused about where I belong at times, I feel comfortable with who I am. I’ve never hidden who I am.”
“I will just say for the record, I’ve never been whitewashed, meaning I would never let somebody cast me with two white parents,” she explained. “But for the first 15 years of my career, I would go in and read for Black parts, but I just wouldn’t get cast. And there weren’t a ton of biracial people with my hair and my eyes on TV.”
And this is why Rashida was “so happy” when Kenya Barris wrote a role especially for her in his 2020 Netflix sitcom #blackAF, which is about a Black family.