Gabrielle Union has long been open about her personal experience with sexual assault. But as the actress revealed in her recent cover story for Hello Beautiful, she never truly faced her trauma head-on until she was confronted with it through a life-changing role.
While in conversation with Me Too founder Tarana Burke, Union revealed that her role as an outspoken high school principal named Eva in Season 3 of Octavia Spencer’s Apple TV+ hit true crime drama Truth Be Told placed her face-to-face with her own past in a way that she had never experienced before. The date marking 30 years since her own rape experience happened to fall during filming, making the shooting process even more emotionally taxing on taxing on the actress.
As Union told Burke, she was ready to move on to something comedic and light after facing so much darkness in her most recent film role in The Inspection. However, her team let her know that this script, although heavy, might be of special interest to her. Once she saw her good friend Spencer’s name was attached, she decided to dive in.
“I trust her in a way that I don’t trust most people in this town in our industry, which is saying a lot,” Union shared. “So if I was gonna do it, it would need to be with Octavia or someone I trust like Octavia.”
Since she had always been open and honest about her own experience – she was assaulted at gunpoint at 19 years while working at a Payless shoe store – Union thought she was at a point where she could tackle the difficult subject matter.
“I felt like, I’m in a solid place to do this job. What I did not realize is, during my rape, I disassociated,” she revealed. “I can clearly describe the feeling of being in the midst of watching, like hovering over myself looking down and watching it happen. And just being like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening…
Read the full article here
