Upon the release of Teyana Taylor’s new film, “A Thousand and One”, which hit theatres on Friday, the actress revealed that her character’s emotions pan out authentically because she was battling her own struggles behind the scenes.
In the drama, Taylor plays Inez, a hairdresser who “kidnaps her son Terry from the foster care system” in order to re-start their lives together. Offscreen, the actress in a mom to daughters Rue Rose, 2, and Iman Tayla (a.k.a. Junie), 6, with husband Iman Shumpert.
In a new interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, Taylor, 32, explained why she felt “emotional” filming the project.
“I was actually six months postpartum when we started working on ‘A Thousand and One’. So I was dealing with literal postpartum depression,” she revealed.
“And in the midst of dealing with postpartum depression, I lost a lot of my childhood friends,” she continued. “[I was] back home to film and then come to find out that a lot of [my] childhood has been erased. That was a lot, emotionally.”
The mom of two noted that playing Inez was “very therapeutic for me.”
“I was able to cry out loud for once. I think I hadn’t been able to do that because when you’re a super mom, that’s all your kids see you as, you’re a superhero all day, every day,” she explained. “So going to the set every day, I was able to put my cape to the side, have my therapy session and just cry out loud.
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She added: “Any type of quiet battles I was fighting or struggles, I was able to pour it all into Inez and really give my all. And I think that’s what made it so real and authentic because every single emotion was real. Every single tear was real. Every single scream was real. Every single emotion was real.”
Taylor told the outlet that her step into the serious role is something she “prayed for [and] was willing to work for.”
“It was something I was willing to fight for. And that’s exactly what I did.”
“A Thousand and One” is now playing in theatres.