Gabrielle Union felt her acting talents weren’t appreciated during her early career days.
Union appears alongside other Black actresses like Halle Berry, Taraji P. Henson, and Tessa Thompson in the new Apple TV+ two-part documentary Number One on the Call Sheet. In her segment, The Perfect Find star talked about feeling “typecast” because of her non-Eurocentric features.
“When you have a more coarse grade of hair, when you have melanin, thicker nose, wider nose, wider lips, you’re not considered, you know, a classic beauty,” Union said, according to People. “I started feeling invisible, like my beauty wasn’t wanted. As a romantic lead? No.”
Among Union’s early roles were movies like Bring It On, She’s All That, Love & Basketball and 10 Things I Hate About You, where she typically played sharp-tongued, mean high school characters. In She’s All That and 10 Things specifically, Union’s characters were just sidekicks to white female leads.
“My look was appealing enough. But not so overpowering that it overshadows the White lead,” Union explained. “You know, and that was my bread and butter, like, for a long time. The bitchy, sassy friend.”
It wasn’t until Black comedy, drama, and action films that Union finally got to play romantic leads, notably in movies like The Wood, Breakin’ All the Rules, Deliver Us from Eva and Bad Boys II. Back in 2018, Union and fellow actress Gabourey Sidibe (who also appears in the Apple TV+ documentary) had a Twitter conversation about being asked to perform Black stereotypes during auditions. Apparently, one casting director even asked her to be “more sassy” like the late Della Reese.
