Why don’t we just start at the top? Tell me more about yourself. What do you do?

I’m from Toronto originally, and I have two kids. I have been an actor for a long time, but it’s really gone back and forth between acting and other things. 

I also do coordination work on the side, which allows me to have flexibility in work and life. I worked at a spin studio and I taught spin forever, and then I transitioned into being a spin trainer. 

So then I started training and managing the team and stuff like that. I was deep in my fitness journey. Honestly, I feel like just a creative soul. The things that fulfill me are the creative parts of my life. 

Amazing. Tell me more about the acting.

I’ve done a lot of commercials and was recently on a show called Beyond Black Beauty on Amazon Prime. 

I do Canadian productions, Hallmark, movie-of-the-week type things. I was in Meet Me Next Christmas, which is on Netflix right now with Christina Milian. It was number one on Netflix, which was so cool to see!

How fun! 

Let's talk about when you decided to go gray and how it happened, especially in a career where people are always looking at you. 

When I was younger, my hair was dark and curly. One day, I decided I wanted dreads. 

This was before faux-locs, when having dreads meant fully committing to them. 

I dyed my hair blonde and got blonde dreads, but I didn’t work for a year because I couldn’t get an audition.

I went from auditioning three times a week to just three auditions the entire year. Eventually, I cut off all my hair and started over. 

By 2020, I had been dyeing my hair since high school because I had gray hair even back then. During the lockdown, I noticed tiny little roots coming in. Usually, I would touch up my hair every two to three weeks, but since we weren’t leaving the house, I decided to leave it for a while.

I realized how good it felt not to dye it and decided to stop altogether. That’s how it started.

It’s so interesting how the pandemic gave people that space. How has going gray impacted your auditions or the types of roles you’re going for now?

It’s funny because I’ve always done extremely young things. When I was in my 20s, I was doing super young roles.

Now I'm going for things that are in my actual age range, 35-to-55...which is totally cool. Its a nice shift of roles.

I’ve heard from different women that they’re actually getting more work with gray hair. Did you find that, too?

The last headshots I did had gray braids. I think I need to show my natural hair a little more because it’s a specific look, right? It would probably shift how much I go out, too.

Funny story, when I did the Christmas movie, they wanted to put a wig on me because, you know, "no gray hair." But after the fitting, they decided to leave my hair curly and natural. It felt so good to be me.

That’s amazing! When you were growing out your gray, did you just let it grow, or did you do anything special to ease the transition?

I have all these tips for growing it out, especially for Black hair, because there are so many different options to get past the first stage. 

One thing I will say is that I wish I had enjoyed the grow-out stage more because I think it looks very beautiful on others. 

During that time, I did things like blending it with braids or using gray hair paint wax.

For the paint wax to work, I think the hair would have to be curly, and it really accentuated the curls. 

I would apply the gray wax, which is similar to when people want to dye their hair pink but use temporary options instead. 

I also used metallic spray and you could just do it on some pieces so it looks like highlights. Those tricks made the transition so much easier.

You had fun with it. That's cool. How long did it take you the whole process?

During the pandemic, I was also pregnant, so my hair grew really fast. It’s totally stopped now. It’s done growing forever! I would say it took about two and a half years to get to shoulder length.

When you were thinking about going gray, were you worried about it? How did you get in the headspace to do that?

I was definitely worried about the career aspect of it because I was doing such young roles, and I didn’t know how it was going to work. 

But I was already kind of in and out of acting, so I just thought, whatever, it doesn't matter. If it didn’t work out, then that’s just how I look, and it is what it is.

I eventually reached a place of self-acceptance and realized that if it didn’t align with what they were looking for, I would just figure out something else to do.

I had this thing in my brain that said, I know how to do hair, I am good at hair. That is the thought that started my TikTok and Instagram. 

I don’t do hair for a living or anything like that, but I know how to make things look cool. I can make styles that are interesting to people, so they can see that if it looks like that, they might feel inspired and think maybe they could do it too.

There were barriers in terms of gray support. I didn’t have any extensions that were gray, all my extensions were black, so I wasn’t going to be able to wear those anymore. 

I went out to find ones that would work, so I could show people that this works too, and you don’t have to dye your hair every second. 

Then, I started getting excited about it, as opposed to feeling the opposite.

What has your experience been since then?

Oh my gosh. I can’t leave my house without women stopping me every second, telling me they are obsessed with my hair. The thing we’re pushing against it’s the literal opposite of the reaction that happens. 

The minute you have silver or gray hair, it’s just so beautiful to people. It may not be the mainstream look, but the amount of attention I get is unbelievable.

It’s so funny because when I came to LA, I thought it was going to be very TV-focused. But everyone I’ve met is so down-to-earth and complimentary. I literally have women yelling out of their cars, "I love your hair, girl!" It’s really lovely.

What’s the advice you give to your followers who ask you about the whole process?

I think you have to feel ready to do it, or maybe that’s incorrect, you don’t have to feel ready. I waited until I felt ready, but the only thing that made me feel ready was the fact that I wasn’t leaving the house.

I look back on that, and it’s actually insane that so many women have the same story, that the only reason we embrace who we are, what we actually look like, or gave ourselves the allowance to be this, is because we couldn’t leave the house.

Let’s not wait for another moment like that. If you want to make that change in yourself, you don’t need anyone else, you don’t need a pandemic to allow you to be yourself.

That’s a great insight. You’re so right about that, because we need something that pushes us so much before we’re like, okay, I can just be me. That’s crazy to think about.

I have a lot of women saying, I was thinking about starting, but I just don’t know. I totally get that feeling, because we were all in that stage.

But I would say with a few tools, just try it. You can always dye it back. You’re going to feel free. You’re going to have that stage where it may be hard to feel like yourself, that transition stage, but I say just try it. Don’t allow yourself to be scared of what other people think.

Because you’re going to see that people are going to like it, and it’s a whole new world on the other side.

I also wanted to make sure I asked you about your book, because I know you wrote a book for your daughter.

It's part of my creative soul to do different things that resonate. The funny thing is, my daughter was very anti-going gray hair the entire time. 

She kept asking me if I was going to dye my hair that day. I assume she thought that having gray hair meant I was going to look older.

I kept telling her, munchkin, this is what actually grows out of my head, so this is how I’m going to leave it. 

That’s why I’m not dyeing it, it’s my choice, and this is how I look. But every time I said that, she’d still ask, so, are you going to dye it tomorrow?

She was six or seven back then, very much a girly girl. She loved styling her own hair and doing all that stuff. I just thought it was so interesting. 

That’s when I decided to write the book. I didn’t want to focus on the negative, but I did know that a lot of kids might not fully understand what it means to go through a transition like this.

Now, her perspective has completely changed. She even says that when she gets gray hair, she’s going to leave it. It’s such a different world from where we started. 

Now she’s totally into it. She’s even annoyed sometimes when people compliment me, like, oh my gosh, not this again.

It’s so cool that she grew up with that. She actually had her own fears about gray hair, having a gray-haired mom, but now she’s come full circle.

Yeah, the book really captures that relationship and journey. I just wanted to show how she came to understand that I’m embracing myself, and she can, at any age, look back and say, ‘My mom did that,’ even when I asked her not to. 

I want her to say the same thing to herself in the future. Now she’s totally into it, so I’m happy with that.