Gabrielle Union On Criticism Of Playing The ‘Side Piece’: If you only take safe roles, you will have the most boring career ever. [VIDEO]

The very busy and talented actress Gabrielle Union star of BET’s Being Mary Jane sat down with The Wall Street Journal to talk about growing opportunities for black actresses and the dynamic’s of her character Mary Jane Paul. Peep the excerpts below.   

What’s in store for season three of Being Mary Jane:

We pick up right where we left off with crazy. You kind of see what happens from the car crash and you sort of see what happens with all of the relationships that were impacted by the car crash. Mary Jane’s relationship with David, Mary Jane’s relationship with Lisa, her best friend, who she discovers is having an affair with her guy. And that’s where the season kicks off.  We go a little deeper into big rigging, in season three we go into more of addiction in season three, different kinds of relationships. That’s all I can safely say without giving away too much.

Her opinion on if black actresses are deemed “bankable” and her production company:

I have a production company with my partner Azenga Stewart who is a writer, producer, and director. It is called ‘’Stew You Productions.” We already produced our first feature for Lifetime called “With this Ring’’ and we kind of killed it in the ratings.  That was our production and we have more things that we are options and more things we are doing right now and that is kind of exciting. I think anytime you have a bankable star which means your ratings are high, you have a great opening box office weekend that is bankable and so Shonda Rhimes (creator of Scandal) has capsized that whole Thursday night starting with Grey’s Anatomy which galvanized true diverse casting.

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Any type of person that you can think of was casted on that show and then Scandal, Kerry [Washington] it becomes a phenomenon. How To Get Away With Murder again, very diverse cast lead by Viola [Davis] and she kills that whole night.  So that alone lends itself and then Empire — their crazy success that lends itself to what we saw this season in pilot season, where we saw hundreds of actors of color given opportunities that never existed before.

Why Gabrielle Union accepted the role of Mary Jane being the other woman:

It’s a whole thing about Kerry and I about shining a light on or glorifying being a ‘’side piece’’ it’s called make believe, it’s called story telling. It was a part of a morality tale with Mary Jane she didn’t win in the end it was just part of the story line.

She also froze her eggs and found out that her eggs where not valuable. People said why you would do that? Because it is a story and it’s relevant story and it is a part of a way we can all learn more, be informed and educated whether that can be about dating married men or freezing your eggs as an older woman. Its infotainment, if you will. So I think if you only take safe roles you will have the most boring career ever and as an artist you would be uninspired.

See the full interview below.

-By @ThankM3Soon