\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>eyana Taylor is \u2013 as she often says to interviewers \u2013 the entertainment equivalent of \u201ca Glade plug-in\u201d air freshener: put her in \u201cany socket\u201d and she will make \u201cevery room smell good\u201d. And, at 34, she has the CV to prove it. After kicking off her career at 15 as a choreographer for Beyonc\u00e9 (she later showcased her own moves to millions in the headline-grabbing video for Kanye West\u2019s 2016 single Fade), the New York native began making her own critically acclaimed, cutting-edge R&B. She has also acted in a slew of movies and TV shows \u2013 including an award-winning turn as a mother who kidnaps her son from the care system in 2023\u2019s A Thousand and One \u2013 and worked as a creative director for brands and a host of other musicians.<\/p>\n But Taylor also likens herself to another household item. \u201cI am a sponge,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m never above being a student.\u201d This was especially true on the set of her latest project, Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s vigilante group caper One Battle After Another. Observing castmates including Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro \u2013 plus the director himself (to many, the greatest of his generation) \u2013 turned her into \u201cSpongeBob SquarePants. I get to have my notebook and take all these notes and soak everything in.\u201d<\/p>\n Having seen her in action as the film\u2019s swaggering, libidinous revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills, it is extremely difficult to imagine Taylor hunched in the corner between takes, scribbling down acting tips. On screen, she is absolutely cocksure, whether demanding fellow vigilante Ghetto Pat (DiCaprio) have sex with her on a car bonnet in the two minutes before the bomb they\u2019ve just planted explodes, instructing Penn\u2019s Colonel Lockjaw at gunpoint to get an erection, or firing off rounds with a machine gun resting on her heavily pregnant stomach before proclaiming: \u201cBitch! I felt like Tony Montana!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n That priceless line was Taylor\u2019s own. Anderson, she says, would frequently ask her to \u201cdo that thing that you do\u201d, which meant \u201cstop worrying about your lines\u201d and \u201cadd my extra little spice to it\u201d. Anderson had been impressed by her performance in A Thousand and One, she says. He ran the idea of casting her by DiCaprio, \u201cknowing that me and Leo is cool\u201d (the pair became pals after meeting a few years ago at Diana Ross\u2019s birthday party). The punt paid off: the film\u2019s first act relies almost entirely on Taylor\u2019s ability to channel an alarming maelstrom of lust, fury, recklessness and righteousness in a crop top and cargo pants. She pulls it off with aplomb.<\/p>\n When we speak, Taylor is in her hotel room in LA; One Battle After Another had its premiere in the city a couple of days earlier, generating instant Oscar buzz. Steven Spielberg describing it as \u201cinsane\u201d and \u201creally incredible\u201d certainly helped. Taylor is thrilled: \u201cThat means he knows who I am, he knows what I look like!\u201d she says with hushed disbelief.<\/p>\n Soon, many more will know. One Battle After Another is likely to be one of the season\u2019s biggest blockbusters \u2013 the car chases alone are worth the price of admission \u2013 but as you\u2019d expect from Anderson, whose eclectic oeuvre includes Boogie Nights, Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread, this is by no means standard Hollywood fare. Loosely based on Thomas Pynchon\u2019s 1990 novel Vineland, it combines political satire, stoner comedy, social realism and slick heist-film styling to chronicle the activities of the French 75, a fictional revolutionary gang who liberate immigration camps and rob banks for funds, before fast-forwarding 16 years to the moment when Perfidia\u2019s daughter is kidnapped.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018I was always in go mode\u2019 \u2026 Taylor performing in 2021. <\/span> Photograph: Scott Dudelson\/Getty Images<\/p>\n As a protagonist, Perfidia is morally ambivalent, to put it mildly (the clue\u2019s in the name), and it is her relationship with Penn\u2019s brutal yet pathetic wannabe white supremacist that triggers the action. \u201cI think she\u2019s badass, I think she\u2019s complex, I think she\u2019s selfish,\u201d is Taylor\u2019s take on Perfidia. What about her baffling dalliance with Lockjaw? She lets out a short laugh. \u201cI mean \u2026 that is so toxic. Was it manipulation, or was it just lust, or was it her falling for the bad guy? You never really know with Perfidia,\u201d she says, sounding a little confounded.<\/p>\n Perfidia\u2019s other big, bewildering decision is to walk out on her baby and resume her violent activism, informing a horrified Pat: \u201cI put myself first and reject your lack of originality.\u201d It\u2019s not the easiest move to empathise with, and Taylor, who has two daughters with her basketball player ex-husband Iman Shumpert, struggled to act it out. \u201cIt was one of the most difficult scenes for me to film without getting emotional. Just imagining myself walking out on my child, that\u2019s a lot. Me personally, in real life, I wouldn\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet like Perfidia \u2013 who is clearly at a low ebb after giving birth \u2013 Taylor also struggled with her mental health in early motherhood. \u201cI\u2019ve been in survival mode before, I\u2019ve dealt with postpartum depression. I know what it feels like to not receive grace and compassion [when you are] categorised as strong. Especially for black women, it\u2019s just like: you\u2019re a strong black woman. What does that even mean? Just because I\u2019m strong doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t have moments of weakness, or moments of needing to feel heard and seen.\u201d She commends Anderson \u201cso much for spreading awareness\u201d of postpartum depression.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018I\u2019ve been in survival mode before\u2019 \u2026 Taylor and Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another.<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy Warner Bros Pictures<\/p>\n Unlike the film\u2019s bomb-dispensing, gun-toting vigilante, Taylor has been able to incorporate motherhood into her work. In 2020, she announced her retirement from music, having felt hemmed in by the industry (\u201cthrown in a box where music is everything, you can\u2019t do nothing else \u2013 and that\u2019s not me\u201d), only to return this August with a new collection of sultry R&B co-released by her own label. Escape Room, which deals with Taylor\u2019s divorce, ends with a congratulatory message from her nine-year-old (\u201cThe world loves you so much \/ Thank you for coming back to music and back to you\u201d). When she first heard her daughter\u2019s words, Taylor \u201cbroke down. Her emotional intelligence is out of this world,\u201d she says, describing her relationship with her children as \u201cthe purest form of love\u201d.<\/p>\n Both Taylor\u2019s daughters \u2013 her youngest is five \u2013 already remind her of herself as a child (\u201cOh my God, this is what I was doing when I was five, this is what I was doing when I was nine\u201d), but she wants them to keep their options open. \u201cI\u2019m not the parent who is like: \u2018I did this so you have to do this too.\u2019 So right now they\u2019re in ballet, they do basketball, they dance, they sing, my youngest is a fashionista. At one point my daughter wanted to play drums. I got her a drum set. At another point she wanted to be a chef; OK, here\u2019s the tools you need. They want to be a janitor? Here\u2019s a broom.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018As a 15-year-old, I had the opportunity to be around some of the most creative people in the industry\u2019 \u2026 Taylor at the Met Gala in 2025.<\/span> Photograph: Angela Weiss\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Taylor, on the other hand, always knew she wanted to be in show business. She describes her younger self as \u201ca character. I was a bossy little thing, I always wanted to direct something.\u201d Yet her experience was limited to singing and dancing around her local neighbourhood, \u201cand Harlem is small\u201d. Things changed abruptly in her mid-teens. \u201cOne of my mom\u2019s good friends worked at Universal [Music] and I remember skateboarding back home and I ran into him on the block. He stopped me and was like: \u2018Listen, you\u2019re talented, you\u2019re fly, I want you to meet my boss and I want you to sing to him.\u201d When the record executive in question asked who she admired, she said Pharrell Williams. \u201cAnd it\u2019s so crazy, because the guy happened to be really close with Pharrell. So I met Pharrell and got signed on the spot [to his label] and everything happened from there.\u201d<\/p>\n It was a fairytale beginning \u2013 she released her first single, Google Me, at 17 \u2013 but Taylor never got swept up in the fantasy of overnight fame. \u201cIt was surreal, but I was always in go mode \u2013 I never got lost on that. I\u2019m from Harlem, I\u2019m a hustler, I\u2019m a grinder. I\u2019ve always been this little businesswoman.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Taylor spent the rest of her teens and early 20s as a protege, first for Williams, then Kanye West, whose label she signed to in 2012. She didn\u2019t mind the dynamic. \u201cI was their artist but we built an adult friendship and respect for each other in the fashion space as well. That\u2019s how me and Ye got cool, we were fashion friends,\u201d she says. \u201cBeing able to have those men in my life has really shaped me: imagine this 15-year-old girl already having this mind full of creativity and then have the opportunity to be around some of the most creative people in the industry. That\u2019s a cheat sheet right there.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet in some ways her success has been a slow-burn: two decades on from that street-corner collision, it finally feels as if Taylor is taking off. Soon, she\u2019ll star in Ryan Murphy\u2019s hotly anticipated legal drama All\u2019s Fair alongside Kim Kardashian, and in Kevin Hart\u2019s action thriller 72 Hours. She\u2019s also been hand-picked by Dionne Warwick to play her in a biopic. Next year she will direct her first feature film, about a New York dance crew.<\/p>\n \u201cAs people we fly a plane,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd that air may be turbulent. The runway might be too crowded so you got to circle around for a few minutes. You might have an emergency landing. But ultimately the goal is to make it to the destination.\u201d Taylor\u2019s love of a career-based metaphor may know no bounds, but her combination of swagger and conscientiousness is infectious. Musician, actor, dancer, director, air freshener, sponge, pilot: Teyana Taylor can be anything she sets her mind to.<\/p>\n One Battle After Another is released on 25 September in Australia, and on 26 September in the UK and US<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Teyana Taylor is \u2013 as she often says to interviewers \u2013 the entertainment equivalent of \u201ca Glade plug-in\u201d air freshener: put her in \u201cany socket\u201d and she will make \u201cevery room smell good\u201d. And, at 34, she has the CV to prove it. After kicking off her career at 15 as a choreographer for Beyonc\u00e9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[820,13652,13651,13654,1394,686,3611,13653],"class_list":{"0":"post-22254","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-battle","9":"tag-grinder","10":"tag-hustler","11":"tag-motherhood","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-taylor","15":"tag-teyana"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}