Source: Leon Bennett/Getty
You might know Andrea Lewis as the youthful beauty Hazel Aden in Degrassi: The Next Generation or Carla from Disney Channel’s Cadet Kellybut the actress and filmmaker’s first beauty memory was when she was a pre-teen cast as young Natalie Cole in Livin’ for Love: The Natalie Cole Story. While Lewis was used to either her mother or herself doing her own hair, the then 13-year-old actress was introduced to a hairdresser for the first time during filming.
“I remember it was a white hairdresser and he said, ‘I’ve got this gel, I’ve got this gel, I’ve got this gel,’ and he was trying his best,” Lewis recounted. “These were products that I hadn’t necessarily seen before. I didn’t think black hair was like a blanket thing that you could just use one type of gel and it just does everyone’s hair.”
Comcast and Faceforward Productions bring docu-series, “The Black Beauty Effect” to Xfinity
From then on, young Lewis became observant of the representation and visibility of black girls in the makeup and styling chair from the amount of heat applied to her curls to the blush they used on her skin. Admiring the simplicity and effortless beauty of her mother and grandmother, who sometimes wore “a red lipstick here or a pink lipstick there,” the actress wanted to continue to highlight the diverse hyphenation of beauty across the board of black women of all shades. and shades.
“When I was a teenager, I paid so much attention to all the brown faces I saw on television, whether it was Beyonce, Tia and Tamera, or Naomi Campbell. I always thought “How can I look like this?”, whatever it was. If their skin was super shiny, if they just look shiny and beautiful, I say, “How can I look like that?” Those are important moments of beauty when I think about how beauty was introduced to me.”
This time, Lewis takes on the media industry from the director’s chair, reclaiming the story of black women in the world of beauty. Keep an eye The black beauty effect — a three-part one-hour docuseries dissecting the evolution, revolution and disruption of the beauty industry. Executive produced by Kahlana Barfield-BrownJackie Aina, Keesha Boyd and Emmy nominee CJ Faison focus the series on three key aspects of beauty – makeup, hair and skin – as it features candid conversations and expertise from beauty editors, celebrity makeup artists and brand managers about the industry’s perception of beauty.
We caught up with Lewis to discuss the inspiration behind it The black beauty effect, the importance of uplifting Black editors and influencers, and how being a child actress brought her behind the scenes. Read the full interview below.
HB: What was the original inspiration behind The Black Beauty Effect?
Andrea Lewis: I think my career has brought me to probably the most unique space that allowed me to be the kind of person to tell this story, to even be interested in this story. Because I grew up on television, I’ve been a makeup chair since I was little. I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly of the makeup hair room when it comes to working with people who know your skin, working with people who don’t, working with people who know your hair, and working with people who do it. not. I’ve seen it all. I’ve figured out all the ways to protect myself when it comes to bringing my bag, and I’ve already prepared my hair.
At the same time, I was also just a normal young girl observing social media, observing popular media with magazines and television, really consuming this and looking for women who I thought were representative of me, to look for inspiration to be like, “Oh, I can look like this person.” I never felt like it was something that really celebrated us or really showed that part of the story. Yeah, beauty is this really popular thing, but nobody talks about the black dollar and how powerful we are, the black consumer. No one talks about all these makeup artists who inspire this look, they don’t give us credit.
I had this in my head for years. I’m in this specific seat as a person who gets to be in front of the camera, behind the camera, in the digital landscape – I get to see it all. I know black beauty is the inspiration. I know we are the dominant force, but I don’t see anyone really highlighting that end of our story. When I saw stories about black beauty, it was more from the perspective of “we’ve been treated like we’re ugly, and nobody likes this, and we’re not the standard of beauty.” Yes, there are negative parts of our history, but that is not the end of it. That’s not all our stories. What I love about The black beauty effect is that what we focused on: who were the game changers? Who were the people who made a difference despite what the popular media tried to do or despite these places that maybe we didn’t necessarily fit in but we figured it out? It’s just a dream come true for me.
HB: How did you go about selecting the cast of black women you wanted to highlight and feature in The Black Beauty Effect?
AL: It was such an interesting process because, again, I’m a fan of Black Beauty, I’m a fan of space. I have followed and observed makeup artists [and] Black Beauty editors for years. I love seeing their lives. I knew when we started that there were certain key players that you needed to have on this project to really make sure it told the right story. Jackie Aina was the first person I had reached out to say, ‘Hey, I’m doing this thing, would you be interested?’, and she said, ‘Yeah, girl, tell me more. What is this?’ I was so happy and impressed because if you are a black girl who is online and pays attention to all things social media beauty, Jackie Aina is that girl. She is the one, she is the information for all Black beauty influencers. For her to give me that stamp of approval right off the bat was amazing.
Kahlana Barfield-Brown, who is also one of our EPs, is a black beauty editor that everyone in the room knows who has done such amazing work. She has all the relationships [and] people respect Kahlana in such a beautiful way. She says this about herself, but I’d say it about her too – she’s a black girl’s black girl. She really supports black women as much as possible. You even saw it how she came on board our project, and she and I had conversations about Elaine Welteroth, Mikki Taylor, Julee Wilson. They were names I already knew we needed and had written down and Kahlana came and confirmed it for me. It went really fast and we got such incredible talent: Mikki Taylor, Lisa Price, Desiree Rogers, Maya Allen. I have been very grateful for our talent overall.
HB: What were some of your personal takeaways from The black beauty effect?
AL: I’ve always known that we belonged in these spaces and that we deserve this kind of story. Seeing our talent sit down in the chair and be so excited to tell us a story about their life because people don’t often ask them about those parts of their career. Amber Riley even told me directly and she was just honored to talk about it. Mikki Taylor probably said the thing that really resonated with me the most. She said: ‘We never tried to assimilate black people, black women. We’ve always just tried to look like ourselves. When it comes to the beauty space, especially the black beauty space, we’re often told that we have to assimilate or people try to act like we want white beauty to be what we’re all trying to achieve and I’ve never felt that way.
I always just wanted to look like myself. The only people who ever inspired me were other black women. When I heard Mikki say that in our interview, that this is something she knows and has always known, I thought: ‘It’s the language. Those are the words that I needed and I didn’t have, that’s the feeling I’ve always had.’ I had a very affirming experience during our recording. It was like the whole thing really confirmed for me how important it is, not just black stories, but especially black women’s stories told by black women. This really confirms my place as a filmmaker, as a creative.
HB: How has your experience on camera given you the opportunity to have a different lens when working behind the camera?
AL: I now believe that I have truly become a producer-actor. I find myself constantly, even when I’m on camera, listening as if I were a producer. I always try to stay one step ahead. I wish I could relax, [but] I just can’t. I find that when I’m on set I have a lot of gratitude and I do my best to think more about the overall story and not just my position in things. I think it’s just my producer brain because I’ve been on the other side of things and know all the moving parts and how hard it can be and just all the things that you have to do. Now that I get to go back and forth, I think it’s made me a better artist. I’m grateful that I’ve been given these opportunities and that I’ve been able to grow in this process, not only as a producer but just in general as an entertainer.
It’s like a full circle graph to me. All of these things needed to happen to get us to where we are right now. With being able to present The Black Beauty Effect, we needed Black Beauty editors. We needed the black celebrity makeup artists who were the only black face in the room and behind the scenes doing what they did. We needed black influencers. We needed all of these things to come full circle for us to get to this place now where we can all really recognize black beauty on a higher level, where we can aspire to look like ourselves. It is important to note the history, the present and where we are going. All of these things matter. It wasn’t one over the other. It’s not just the influencer, it’s not just the editor, it’s not just the makeup artist. They all had to work together.
HB: When you hear the term “Black is beautiful”, how has the interpretation evolved over the years?
AL: I immediately think of self-love. Black is beautiful to me is the diversity of black. More than anything else, that saying is really about accepting ourselves fully. There’s been so much we’ve had to learn, unpack as black people because Eurocentric beauty standards have been imposed on us as intensely as on some people. Even today in 2022 it is challenging for them to say that black is beautiful. It’s challenging for them to know what they really mean when they say that, to accept their hair as it is, shrinkage and all, frizz and all to really be like, I love myself fully, I like my skin, I like all the things, i like my moves.
To me, black is beautiful [is] to be able to say it very confidently. I think it’s evolved over the years because when you really started it, it was more like the civil rights era, the 60s you started. That’s when the Black power movement started happening, and it was associated with Afros and that revolution. When we say black is beautiful, I think we really mean the diversity of blackness. I think we want to see more forms of blackness. We want to see every complexion, every hair type, and we want to celebrate them all equally. There’s no longer this thing like, “That’s good hair, or that’s the right complexion.” All our hair is good hair. All our complexions are beautiful. We’re not trying to be in this group or that group. We want everything to really mean what we say.
Watch the trailer below:
The Black beauty effect premieres November 25, 2022 on Comcast Black Experience on Xfinity.
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