BeforeShalita Grantplayedmom-blogging influencer Sherry Conradin theNetflixthrillerYou, she starred as special agent Sonja Percy onNCIS: New Orleans. During an appearance on the Monday’s episode ofTamron Hall, the actress opened up about the reason she says she left the long-running CBS drama in 2018.
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She continued, “When you get a show and it’s a multimillion-dollar show, and you see that your treatment in the hair department is totally different from what’s going on with your co-workers on a granular level you’re like ‘Okay like that sucks like I have to pay for my own wigs. I have to come with my hair done. But this is the multimillion dollar production,’ but then to get blamed for production, right?”
The actress said tension on set created a narrative that she was hard to work with.“But the truth is, I wasn’t being worked with,” Grant explained. “So I have to save myself.”
PEOPLE has reached out to CBS for comment.
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The actress previously complained about her experience on the show, recalling a culture of finger-pointing during an interview with theLos Angeles Timesin July 2020.
“I came back and I was like, ‘I ain’t taking this … no more.’ I found joy, and my standards are higher,” she said of leaving the show. “I am letting you know now, if you don’t want me here, if I’m just being tolerated, I’m leaving. Because I want to go where I’m celebrated, not where I’m tolerated.”
“For Black women, the way our hair is policed is that we’re told it’s unprofessional in its natural state. From the time that you’re in school, you are getting this lesson. It’s shored up with punishment,” theSearch Partystar explained. “WithNCIS, it wasn’t just that the people didn’t know how to do my hair. The cosmetology board teaches that hair is hair, which essentially erases Black and Asian hair, because there are differences…What was specific to them was a couple of producers who were committed to [my character] Sonja Percy not having a natural curl pattern.”
“It was all because, in their minds, a love interest doesn’t look like that,” she added. “A love interest has straight hair. It’s all built around those assumptions, and I suffered because of that.”
These days, Grant stars in the Netflix hitYou. Season 3 is streaming now.
source: people.com
