The biggest aches come when Taylor has to be away from her two daughters, Rue, 6, and Junie, 10. From red carpets to courtside at basketball games, she keeps her mini-mes close. “Everybody knows, I don’t play about my babies,” she says.
The girls are getting older, and she wants them to socialize, so they go to school in person instead of at home, which makes it tricky for them to be with her 24/7 while she’s working. “I do get separation anxiety and go into little depressions when I’m away from them,” Taylor says, looking down, her voice growing sad. “It’s one of the busiest, most successful years of my career, and I’m trying to balance that with motherhood.”
Often, Taylor feels misread. “I got strong features. I look very androgynous, and I think people get intimidated just by looking at me,” she says. “I don’t get a lot of grace. They treat me like I’m tough when I’m really a princess. I am just a girl.”
This is a familiar reality for many Black women, who get cast as aggressive or unshakeable by a world that demands we stay vigilant to survive, yet still looks to us to save it at every turn. “We’re Superwoman all the time. When do we ever get to take our cape off?” Taylor asks. At the Golden Globes, a line from her speech reminded Black women and girls: “Our softness is not a liability.”
She compares herself to an egg; her exterior might look hard, but inside she’s just yolk. “My muscle memory is love,” she says with such sincerity it’s as if she reached into her core and pulled the words out. “It does hurt when I see certain things on the internet [about herself] because I’m like, ‘Damn, I thought people would be happy.’”
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