Jasika Nicole
How has being out affected Jasika Nicole’s career? “I truly don’t know,” she tells GO. “It’s the same as asking me how being black has affected my work — it’s hard to tell because I haven’t ever been anything else, so I haven’t experienced anything else.” As an actress, she recognizes that more roles go to cisgender, straight white women, but Nicole also understands how her identity as a biracial queer woman has afforded her privileges others don’t get, considering she is cisgender, light-skinned, and able-bodied. “Yes, I have been discriminated against because of my race and my sexuality, but I have no right to complain about these things if I can’t also recognize the advantages I have had which have allowed me to forge a successful career in film and TV,” she tells GO. And Nicole has found success, landing roles in high-profile TV shows like “Fringe” and “The Good Doctor.” She’s also voiced the protagonist Keisha in the hit podcast “Alice Isn’t Dead”, which chronicles a truck driver’s surrealist search for her missing wife. The most rewarding aspect of her career, Nicole says, is that she is always learning and being challenged. “As an actor, I can only portray a character through the lens of my own history and experience, and since our lives and world are ever-evolving, it means that my perspective is, too. I could play the same character at various moments in my life and the performance would be different every single time.” —RK
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