Welcome to The Black Affect, a digital storytelling experience where celebrities share a moment they’ve been made aware of their own Blackness while in the entertainment industry.
Actor and recording artist Trevor Jackson has been in showbiz since he was a kid. Seriously, he played young Simba on Broadway. And now, he’s the handsome college-educated, woke bae on Grown-ish.
As a young Black man with a career that spans most of his life, Jackson has dealt with his fair share of racial microaggressions and full-on racist moments from Hollywood’s heaviest hitters.
“I feel my Blackness daily,” Jackson told ESSENCE in an exclusive interview.
Whether it’s watching his White friends get twice—sometimes thrice—the amount of auditions he acquires or being told that he did the best out of everyone in an audition, but they’ve already cast a Black lead, Jackson revealed that he’s dealt with these systematic setbacks with positivity.
“The doors are definitely opening,” Jackson said of Hollywood.
Check out the video above to hear more of Jackson’s story in Hollywood.