As Raven-Symoné’s work draws her from the television screen to the Broadway stage, Oprah Winfrey sat down with Symoné to bridge the gap from adolescence to her adult presence.
Though hers was not the namesake for the television show, Raven-Symoné gained a unanimous “Aww” from America in her role as Olivia on The Cosby Show. As a child star and, later, a figure many youth associated with Disney Channel works such as That’s So Raven and The Cheetah Girls, Symoné has recently made a subdued leap to Broadway, starring in the stage adaptation of “Sister Act”.
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| Symoné as Olivia in The Cosby Show. Photo courtesy of style blazer.com |
Despite her continued body of work and aptitude to stay out of the public eye, Symoné’s recent interview on Oprah Winfrey’s “Where Are They Now?” is making up for missed tabloids of years past.
Concerning her identity, Symoné told Oprah:
“I don’t need language [for identity]. I don’t need a categorizing statement for it. I don’t want to be labeled gay. I want to be labeled a human who loves humans. I’m an American. I’m not an African-American. I don’t know where my roots go to. I do know that my roots are in Louisiana. And that’s a colorless person.”
Before the full interview debuted on the OWN network, American audiences erupted on Twitter with refute to Symoné’s thoughts on racial identity.
In an act that makes a clear delineation from her sit-com history, Symoné’s re-definition of racial classification takes several steps from the comfortable categorization of race that was apparent in The Cosby Show era.
The New York Post writes of the interview in defense of Symoné and her progressive act, which offers that individuals should accept and deny the labels that society subjects us to. The article titled, “She’s So Raven”, reads, “In short, any honest person looking at what she said knows this woman didn’t reject either her race or her sexuality. All she rejected were the labels.”
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| Symoné and Oprah Winfrey on the set of the "Where Are They Now?" interview. Photo courtesy of people.com |
For public figures, media purports a monopolization of ideas. Even our most prized media forms define people and events in definitive manners. It is this narrow nature of media that Symoné defies in her OWN interview.
In a short span of time, Symoné expands on the ways in which audiences should be able to relate with those they see on television and on stage. If sit-coms intend to re-create reality and the people within it, sit-coms need also to advance in real-time with the reality of policy and identity and the individuality that comes with the labeling of Americans today. Because, according to Symoné’s reminder, this country is a melting pot.
Symoné’s childhood character, Olivia, was known to stir the plot and create profound ideas to linger for her cast-mates and audiences alike. To that end, it wasn’t so out-of-character for Symoné to re-align the American tendency to regulate race. With a friendly approach and enough quirky character as she held two decades ago, Symoné pushes race into relevant representation.
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