Jodie Turner-Smith opened up to Elle Magazine about what it’s like raising a biracial daughter and ow it has shifted her views on colorism.
According to PEOPLE the Queen & Slim actress, 36, explains how daughter Janie — whom she shares with husband Joshua Jackson — will have a “completely different experience” than either of her parents as she is both Black and white.
“She is going to have a completely different experience in the world than I did, because I have given birth to a mixed-race girl,” Turner-Smith tells the outlet of her daughter, who turns 3 next month.
“It’s interesting because I had a lot of resistance to becoming a mother and, throughout my life, I always said if I were to have children, I wanted to have Black, Black babies so that I could affirm them as children with the love that I felt I needed to have been affirmed with by the outside world.”
When Turner-Smith fell in love with the Dr. Death actor, 44, her feelings shifted.
“To decide not to have a child with somebody you love, just because they’re white, was insane to me. But, at the same time, I did have this mini pause, where I was like, ‘She’s going to be walking through the world not only having an experience that I did not have, but looking like people that, in a way, I’d always felt a little bit tormented by,’ ” Turner-Smith acknowledges.
“Now that I’ve got this little, tiny, light-skinned boss, I feel like it’s the universe teaching me lessons,” she continues. “I’ve been given a daughter who looks this way to heal my own conversations around colourism.”
Speaking with Bustle in December, Turner-Smith praised her husband for his support of her as a working mom, saying he “has always tried to maintain that I would always have all the support that I needed so that I could do both.”
In addition, the couple has the support of Turner-Smith’s mom — who lives with the family — and at times, a nanny.
“Right now my daughter still comes with me most of the time, except when I go on trips that are under a week. That has been working for us so far,” she explained at the time. “Obviously it’s challenging because I don’t want to create a space in which my husband can’t see her when he’s working.”
Check out her full editorial on Elle here.
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