Teyana Taylor isn’t letting the criticism of her One Battle After Another character get her down.
Source: Brianna Bryson / Getty
The singer-turned-actress is buzzing after her large win on the Golden Globes, winning Best Supporting Actress, and beating heavyweights like Emily Blunt, Elle Fanning, Ariana Grande, Amy Madigan and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas.
Sadly, the response to her win hasn’t been utterly constructive, even from followers of Taylor. Loads of of us who watched One Battle After Another criticized the movie for over-sexualizing Teyana’s character, evaluating her win to Halle Berry’s Oscar for Monster’s Ball, a job the place her character had intercourse with Billy Bob Thornton.
Throughout the movie, Taylor’s character, Perfidia Beverly Hills, grew to become a fixation for Sean Penn’s Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, a corrupt, ultraconservative white man in energy who has an obsession with Black ladies in non-public. In a dialog with Vanity Fair launched following her Golden Globe win, Taylor tiptoed across the subject, ensuring to not get into specifics.
“I believe we don’t get pleasure from seeing the tough actuality, however that is what’s occurring,” she says when requested in regards to the criticsm of Perfidia.
“Another individual interviewed me and talked about one thing about Perfidia and the way folks felt like she was overly sexy,” she continued. “And I’m like, do you notice the very first thing we see of Perfidia is her having a gun to a man’s head and he calls her candy factor? Are you—are we watching the identical movie?”
Taylor went on to clarify that she appears to see her character makes use of her sexuality to her benefit somewhat than getting taken benefit of.
“Perfidia type of dived into the, ‘Oh, you assume I’m scorching? All proper, wager. Cool if I get to nonetheless do what I’m doing, all I gotta do is present you a little bit titty or one thing,’” she stated.
This isn’t the primary time Teyana has addressed this line of pondering, insisting the fact of her character is just too exhausting to just accept for some viewers throughout an interview with The Hollywood Reporter final yr.
“Is that not what Black ladies undergo?” she stated. “We are fetishized, particularly by creepy motherfuckers. And we’re, sadly, the least protected folks. Showing what Black ladies undergo, that’s a tough actuality to just accept. And this film ought to spark debate, I all the time knew it could, as a result of generally you simply bought to shake the desk.”
