Tracee Ellis Ross: "Mental health can be so isolating"

Tracee Ellis Ross is putting it all out there. The 53-year-old actress is making her Broadway debut in Every Brilliant Thing, a one-person play about dealing with depression and grief. But it’s truly about finding hope through the pain. In an interview with TheGrio, Ross explained that she wants audiences to come away from the performance understanding that no one has to go it alone. 

In Every Brilliant Thing, a narrator chronicles their lifelong relationship with their mother's depression. To cope with her mother's suicide attempts, the narrator–as a child initially– begins a list of every beautiful and brilliant thing that makes life worth living. Tracee Ellis Ross began performances in Every Brilliant Thing on July 7 at the Hudson Theatre in New York City. 

“Mental health is something that can be so isolating and can have so much misunderstanding about what it is and what it looks like,” Ross explained.

Her version of the production is reimagined from the perspective of a Black woman, adding Black cultural references and experience into the story. And July is Minority Mental Health Month. 

“I think people don’t always know what people are going through,” Ross continued. “And people don’t always know what they’re going through, and that it’s not something they have to weather alone.”

She’s starred on hit sitcoms like black-ish and Girlfriends, and Ross says telling this particular story this way has been important to her.

“I’m so grateful to be a part of telling a story that helps to share it in a way that is accessible,” she says. “That is soft, that is human, that is warm and gentle, but also that is joyful.”

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