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TRACEE Ellis Ross is showing off her bare feet.
More than two months into lockdown and the actress is still enjoying the novelty of conducting interviews over Zoom from the comfort of her living room, complete with fresh cut white flowers and comfy-looking sofas.
“I don’t have shoes on!” she says gleefully as she yanks her foot up towards her face so it’s visible to the webcam. “Look!”
She is remarkably relaxed and enthusiastic for a woman who has just faced her biggest fear.
After a decades-long successful acting career, as the star of comedies Girlfriends and Black-ish, the daughter of megastar Diana Ross is finally ready to let people hear her sing. She plays the chart-topping diva Grace Davis in new comedy The High Note, who is grappling with the choice between cashing in and signing up for a Las Vegas residency, or releasing a new album that might land like a lead balloon.
Ross shows off her impressive voice in the film, and has even released a song from the soundtrack, Love Myself, as a single, but admits that while she was excited to finally show what she can do, she was nervous about inviting comparisons to her famous parent.
“I think it was a combination of both,” she says thoughtfully. “It was my biggest dream as a child (to sing) and somehow with waiting as long as I did, it became my biggest fear.
“Being my mom’s child, of course, duh, that’s some big shoes to step into. She’s just an international icon and beloved by the world and broke barriers and opened up roads etc.
“But I don’t think I had and have any concern, particularly after people see the film, that people will think I’m playing her. The story has nothing to do with my mother, that was not of concern to me.
“I think it was my own personal fear of having to face what had grown into this big fear of ‘Am I going to be compared to my mom? Or to anyone else?
“And the same as Grace, at this point in my career is it really worth me trying something new? Is that really worth it?
“And yes it has been worth it. In every way. I have opened up a freedom within myself that I am so grateful for and I faced my biggest fear and now my voice is out the bag.”
The film also gave 47-year-old Ross the chance to explore the character of an unmarried woman who was not in pursuit of a man, providing an example of a female character she felt was missing from culture when she was younger.
Instead the key relationship in the film is between Grace and her personal assistant Maggie, played by Dakota Johnson, who dreams of producing Grace’s music.
“I wish growing up I had had more ideas of what it was like to curate your own life and curate your own happiness” Ross says, “because it’s so personal.
“And that was another thing that drew me to the film, that the story of this was not the knight in shining armour, it was not about this woman in context of a man, it was two women in the context of themselves, in the world, going after who they want to be and I loved that.
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