“I hope that one day we can all be free to talk about mentalhealth and be okay with seeking help.”
Micaiah Carter. Wardrobe Styling by Shibon Kennedy at Cartel & Co. Prop Styling by Kate Stein at Magnet Agency. Hair by Tym Wallace at Mastermind Management Group. Makeup by Ashunta Sheriff-Kendricks at Mastermind Management Group. Manicure by Gina Edwards at See Management. On Taraji: Top and skirt by Aisling Camps. Earring by L’Enchanteur. Cuffs by Jennifer Fisher.
I’m in Chicago to interview Henson because she is a strong advocate for mental health awareness in the black community—in 2018 she launched a nonprofit foundation to address the issue, and in June she testified in front of the Congressional Black Caucus Second Youth Suicide Forum. SELF is a health media brand; smashing the stigma around mental illness is part of our mission. So I have entered this conversation with a pretty clear understanding of the scope of the crisis: In 2017, 4.
Henson recognizes that this pervasive, unending thrum of anxiety for the safety of your children and loved ones spans generations. “My grandmother is 95 years old,” she says. “She worries about her children, her children's children, and her great-grandbabies because she knows that at any given moment you can be picked on or killed for the color of your skin.”
In working through her own issues, Henson realized that her experiences weren’t happening in a vacuum but were actually emblematic of much larger cultural and systemic factors. The more she explored the topic, the more committed she became to illuminating mental wellness in the black community—both by addressing the root causes and by making it easier for black folks to be open about our mental health struggles.
In the beginning Henson worked as a substitute teacher, going on auditions as her schedule allowed and waiting for her big break. She landed the iconic Yvette role in the 2001 John Singleton film. Once the shoot wrapped, there was about a year between the end of filming and the movie’s release. “I had to literally go back to substitute teaching until the film came out,” she says., a Lifetime Original television series. More work followed, like her role as Shug in 2005’s.
It took several therapists before Henson found the One. She’s been open about her search for what she calls “a unicorn” of a therapist: someone culturally competent who could help her process pain. “When you find that right person, oh my God, the sky cracks open,” she says.costar Gabourey Sidibe introduced Henson to her own therapist, another black woman.
“I love Taraji,” Sidibe says. “I see how hard she works and how much she splits herself to do for others, whether through her acting, her philanthropy, or her friends and family. I just wanted to give her something that was just for her. A space to check in with herself.
With that said, she’s doing her best to adjust. “This right knee reminds me [of my age] every time I try to do a squat, but I'm in a place where I embrace it,” she says with a chuckle. “It doesn't bog me down. I live. I go out. I do things that make me feel vivacious and young at heart. If I smother the little TJ inside, I'm going to stop living.
“That hurt me to my core,” she says. “I was like, ‘Something has to be done.’ We have to be invested in our children.” Named for her father, who was thought to have bipolar disorder, and run by her childhood best friend, Tracie Jade Jenkins, who serves as executive director, Henson sees the foundation as part of her legacy.
I ask her whether sticking by these folks has had consequences for her. “I haven’t really had any backlash,” she says, adding that the fear of being canceled for supporting men like Howard doesn’t dominate her thoughts. “At the end of the day, I can love a person through their flaws, you know?” she says. “People have had to love me through my flaws.”
About those bumps: Initially Hayden, who is 13 years Henson’s junior, thought she was a “prima donna celebrity who has her way with guys and moves on,” she says. Henson thought Hayden was a good-looking “athlete who has his way with women.” She started to assume that his proneness to falling asleep when she got home from work meant he was exhausted from cheating escapades. “Whenever he would fall asleep, [I’d think,] Oh, you cheating on me?” she recalls.
Ever the hopeless romantic , I lean in and ask Henson whether she believes in the oft-repeated notion that once you do the work, your partner will arrive. “That’s foolish to believe,” she says. Lots of times, she says, it just works out that you commit to a person while you’re still working through unresolved issues. “How do you maneuver and do the work with this other person involved?” she asks. “That's the real work.
Beyond her advocacy work with the foundation, Henson has a lot going on professionally. She is in the process of producing a movie about Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black boy who was abducted and murdered in 1955 by white men in Mississippi after a white woman accused him of harassing her. She’s in talks to work on four other projects as well: one for her to star in, and three more for her to produce.
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