Earlier this week, as the smooth-talking wine sales representative Sloane, Latto made her acting debut in an episode of Grown-ish.
During the televised episode, the superstar rapper visits a winery to drop off a delivery for Doug (Diggy Simmons) in order to lock down a date and her sales commission, stating “You can’t rush fine wine…or fine women.”
Developing her multi-hyphenate reputation, the recording artist (born Alyssa Michelle Stephens) has enjoyed taking on other creative challenges, as she recently told Cosmo “I want to get in my acting bag, because I see myself going out like Rihanna. I don’t see myself doing music forever.” “Maybe it has to do with the fact that I’ve been doing it for so long already. Sometimes you just want more. I just did my first little acting gig the other day and I fell in love with that. I like more serious roles.”
Throughout its final season, Grown-ish has opened its series up to a number of musicians including Kelly Rowland, Omarion, and NLE Choppa.
In early 2023 Kenya Barris spoke to Rolling Stone about Grown-ish which was a spin-off of Black-ish. Both series were previously criticized for perpetuating colorism, particularly as it relates to Black women, similar to the criticism Latto faced early in her career when she was performing under the moniker Mulatto, a controversial term that refers to people of mixed white and Black ancestry.
“Grown-ish was a spinoff of the character that was the daughter on black-ish. So I think that people needed to have something to say,” Barris explained. “With that being said, I am so happy that I chose to use those characters that I knew really well and to talk about those things, because I felt like the show was far more successful than it wasn’t. And it talked about things that hadn’t necessarily been spoken about before.” “And I feel like I’ve heard the – some of my favorite jokes, you know: you say biracial in the mirror three times, Kenya Barris appears. Drake’s baby looks like Kenya Barris produced it. Like, I get it. I get the jokes. But I also feel like if you look at my body of work, everything I’ve done has been to try and promote Black culture in every form and to show that we’re not monolithic and there’s so many versions of us.”
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Author: Saul Goode
Photo: HOTSPOTATL