Over the years, Gabrielle Union has surely established herself as a force in Hollywood. Not only does she turn heads in every carpet she attends, but she’s been in countless movies and TV shows like Being Mary Jane, Bring It On, The Perfect Find, and so on.
But, in a candid conversation in the new AppleTV+ documentary Number One on the Call Sheet, Union got honest about being typecast at the beginning of her career.
“When you have a more coarse grade of hair, when you have melanin, thicker nose, wider nose, wider lips, you’re not considered, you know, a classic beauty,” Union said of the industry, per People. “I started feeling invisible, like my beauty wasn’t wanted.”
As a result, Union was never offered the lead role and played the Black sidekick to the white lead instead in movies like She’s All That and 10 Things I Hate About You.
“My look was appealing enough,” she explained. “But not so overpowering that it overshadows the White lead.”
She then showed the script for 10 Things I Hate About You, which described her character Chastity and Larisa Oleynik’s character, Bianca Stratford. “BIANCA STRATFORD, a beautiful sophomore, stares facing the mirror,” the script reads. “Her less extraordinary, but still cute friend, CHASTITY, stands next to her.”
“And so I was the perfect person to be ‘the friend,’ just left of center of this White girl,” Union said, before correcting herself. “These — ’cause there was a series of them: 10 Things I Hate About You. Then She’s All That. Then the following summer, Bring It On. You know, and that was my bread and butter, like, for a long time. The bitchy, sassy friend.”
Union’s first major lead role happened many years later in Being Mary Jane, which ran from 2013 to 2019.
Number One on the Call Sheet is out now on AppleTV+. The series will take a deep dive into the careers of Hollywood’s major Black celebrities, from Union to Denzel Washington, and discuss their career highs, their biggest challenges and what it takes to really find success in the industry.
Before you go, click here to see our favorite rom-coms where the main couple isn’t white.
