You Season 3 Star Shalita Grant Explains Why She Left NCIS New Orleans

You Season 3 Star Shalita Grant Explains Why She Left NCIS: New Orleans

You star, Shalita Grant, explains that she left NCIS: New Orleans to protect herself after racist stereotypes led to her hair being damaged.

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You Season 3 Star Shalita Grant Explains Why She Left NCIS New Orleans

You star Shalita Grant has opened up on the racist stereotypes and physical damage that prompted her to leave NCIS: New Orleans. You is a Netflix psychological thriller series, based on the book of the same name by Caroline Kepnes. The series follows Joe Goldberg, a young bookstore manager, who becomes dangerously and violently obsessed with certain women and does everything he can to insert himself into their lives. The series has gained critical acclaim and You season 3 even challenged Squid Game’s position as the most popular show on the streaming service.

You season 3 introduced several new cast members, including Grant, who portrays Sherry Conrad. Conrad is married to Cary Conrad (Travis Van Winkle) and is a popular mom influencer who has gathered a local following on social media. Sherry and Cary are true couple goals, but Sherry can be a bit of a “mean girl” and feels threatened by Love Quinn’s (Victoria Pedretti) and Goldberg’s arrival to the suburban neighborhood. Grant has garnered praise for her performance as Conrad, but before she was an actress in Netflix’s top show, she portrayed Special Agent Sonja Percy on NCIS: New Orleans. Now, she is revealing the troubling reasons behind her departure from NCIS.

In an interview with People, Grant revealed that she left NCIS: New Orleans due to a poor work environment. Grant explained that she was treated differently than the rest of the cast and that stereotypes led to her hair being damaged by the hairstylists on set. The crew decided that Grant’s natural curly hair wasn’t right for the show and instead wanted her to have straight hair. However, the hairstylists on set failed her and damaged her hair to the point that she was verging on baldness. This led to her having to purchase her own wigs or come to set with her hair already fixed, something that her white colleagues didn’t have to do. The unequal treatment and physical and emotional damage led to her decision to leave the show to protect herself. Check out her statement below:

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It was about a year and a half in the making. I had started documenting some of the physical damage that was going on — it’s harder to document the emotional damage. I started documenting in January 2017 you know what was going on with the wigs. In six months time, I had already had a bald spot in my head from season 2. Everybody on Twitter let me know, ‘That looks like a helmet!’ by that point I didn’t care anymore, because I was protecting myself. When you get a show and it’s a multimillion-dollar show, and you see that your treatment in the hair department is totally different from what’s going on with your co-workers on a granular level you’re like ‘Okay like that sucks like I have to pay for my own wigs. I have to come with my hair done. But this is the multimillion dollar production,’ but then to get blamed for production, right? But the truth is, I wasn’t being worked with. So I have to save myself. I came back and I was like, ‘I ain’t taking this no more.’ I found joy, and my standards are higher. I am letting you know now, if you don’t want me here, if I’m just being tolerated, I’m leaving. Because I want to go where I’m celebrated, not where I’m tolerated…. With NCIS, it wasn’t just that the people didn’t know how to do my hair… What was specific to them was a couple of producers who were committed to Sonja Percy not having a natural curl pattern. It was all because, in their minds… a love interest has straight hair. It’s all built around those assumptions, and I suffered because of that.

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Grant’s statement illustrates troubling tension on the set of NCIS: New Orleans and also brings awareness to the stereotypes that harm actresses and actors. Grant suffered because her natural hair curl was somehow deemed inferior to the stereotypical long, thick, straight hair of white women. As Grant stated, in a multimillion dollar production, she should not be singled out and forced to do her own hair simply because the hairstylists are committed to an unnatural standard. However, her experience on NCIS taught her to leave the table when respect is not being given. She will only now work in an environment where she is celebrated, which makes viewers hopeful that her experience on You has treated her right.

Overall, the treatment that Grant received on the set of NCIS illustrates that Hollywood still has a long way to go in embracing diversity and equality. Harmful racist stereotypes are especially prevalent in the acting industry, where production crews assume that a hero must be white or that a love interest’s hair must be straight. While some films, such as Shang-Chi, strive to destroy racist stereotypes, they still live on, especially in subtle ways such as criticizing or trying to change a black woman’s natural hair. As Grant escapes a toxic work environment and gets the praise she deserves for her You performances, it will hopefully inspire others to protect themselves and to never settle for merely being tolerated.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/ncis-new-orleans-shalita-grant-left-show-why/

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