LIMITLESS: TEYANA TAYLOR

TEYANA TAYLOR IS A MASTER OF REINVENTION. SHE JOINS TARAJI P. HENSON TO EXPLORE INTENTION, INTUITION, AND REWRITING THE BLUEPRINT.

By Megan Hullander

There’s a particular kind of presence—something beyond charisma but adjacent to it, a gravitational force exerted through some ineffable, subdermal conviction. Teyana Taylor has it in spades. She moves through the world like someone who’s already seen the blueprint, studied it, annotated its weak points, and decided to redraw it in permanent marker. She is, at any given moment, a dancer, singer, actress, director, muse, mother, Harlemite, hustler. But to think of these roles as separate is to miss the point, because Teyana is not one thing after another but all of them at once. This is something instinctual, fluid, organic. It’s expansion, iteration, refusal.

At 15—an age when most people are still fumbling their way through algebra or trying to figure out how to lie convincingly to their parents—Teyana was choreographing for Beyoncé. Which is the kind of fact that, in a conventional narrative, would be The Moment, the pinnacle, the high-water mark that everything either builds to or recedes from. But for Teyana, it was just one more in a series of days spent disregarding whatever limitations the world tried to impose upon her. She moves with the acuity of someone whose body has never been still for very long; she sings with a voice that sounds as though it has lived more years than she has. A cellular kind of confidence.

When Tyler Perry approached Teyana about his forthcoming drama Straw, and she saw Taraji P. Henson was already attached, she didn’t hesitate. Because Taraji is a force in her own right—someone who is at once the archetype and the disruptor, the foundation and the revision. There is, in her performances, a sense of compressed history, a density of lived experience. You see it in Baby Boy, Hustle & Flow, Hidden Figures, and Empire. This almost unbearable transparency of feeling. There’s a reason that audiences believe her. It’s the same reason institutions might underestimate her. She’s that rare combination of accessible and undeniable. She’s warm, disarming, hilarious. And devastatingly good.

So when these two women meet for a conversation, it is not the manicured, canned-response type that so often gets repackaged as “intimate” despite being anything but. It is a conversation about art and survival, joy and exhaustion. It is about motherhood, money, and faith. About the kind of strength that doesn’t announce itself. It is about the expectation—persistent, exhausting—that women, particularly Black women and especially those in the public eye, will always be strong. About the unsung, invisible work of survival that’s both heroic and mundane. And it is, above all, about the refusal to be just one thing—to continue learning, growing, being better.

TEYANA TAYLOR: Hey, honey bunny, what’s going on?

TARAJI P. HENSON: Everything and nothing at the same time.

TT: I feel that.

TPH: Let me just start by saying how proud I am. Is there anything you can’t do? You’re just gonna keep growing and growing. So I ain’t worried about you. Did you always know you wanted to do music?

TT: I did actually, but I started out dancing. Me and my cousin would always redo “The Way You Make Me Feel” by Michael Jackson. I’d be the girl just walking back and forth. I was always a character, but I wasn’t singing yet. Then, when “No Diggity” came out, I would sing that. My mom would be blasting music, and I’d have my ear to the door singing my heart out. You couldn’t tell me I wasn’t Celine Dion singing the Titanic song. It was always drama.

TPH: One thing was new to me—I didn’t know you choreographed something for Beyoncé when you were 15.

TT: This is when the Harlem mentality really came out. I had one job and it was to teach Beyoncé the Chicken Noodle Soup. But you already know, me being me, I gotta go and add. When security finally brought me into the room, like, “She ain’t no superstar,” I was like, “Man, what’s up? My name is Teyana Taylor.” I had that confidence, like, Listen, this is who I am. When I started dancing, yo, B was so hype. I could have just been a random girl coming to teach her the Chicken Noodle Soup, but it was just how involved and face-to-face, how passionate she was about that. That day, I learned that nobody is ever above learning, no one is ever above being a student. Never be afraid of being a better version of yourself. I’m this 15-year-old girl teaching her this dance and then sneaking in some shit, and she’s taking it.

TPH: That’s when you realized you were a choreographer?

TT: In Harlem, we are known for having dance groups. I’d be walking down the street and see a group dance, and [be] like, I don’t like that. Let’s try it this way. I’ve always naturally been a helper, even though I wasn’t a part of the group. I did my good deed and kept pushing on my skateboard. So when I worked with Beyoncé, you could not tell me nothing. What I appreciated the most was that no matter how big or small the choreography was, Beyoncé credits everybody. If you cleaned the cups after every take, you’re on that credit list. It takes a village, you know. She played a big part in how I was molded as an artist.

TPH: And we know you mastered the music and the choreography when you did that dance for that boy—Kanye, the “Fade” video. Girl, that still strikes to this day. But acting, when did that bug bite you?

TT: I’ve always been acting, but at that [time], it was like, put the album out, push everything else to the back burner. I’ve just never been the kid that was okay with being put in a box. I was already dancing, singing, and being a character. But of course, being new, wanting to be successful, and [being] signed to the dream person, I understood the priority of it. I started to lean more into acting when there was a standstill in music. I feel like I’m naturally funny. I’m naturally dramatic. I always wanted to be in television and film, and that’s when I got my first opportunity to be in Madea’s Big Happy Family. Doing Straw is a full-circle moment because I did my first movie with Tyler Perry.

TPH: When you read Straw, what was it about that script that made you feel like you had to be a part of it?

TT: Well, let’s be very, very clear: Straw came to me and they said that Taraji was in it, and I was like, “Okay, cool. Done deal.” But it felt good to reunite with [Tyler] in a more serious manner. And I’m more grown up now, you feel what I’m saying? I’m gonna kill this role. It’s cool—A Thousand and One was this, and now I get to be a cop [in Straw]. And I was doing [One Battle After Another] with Paul Thomas Anderson at the same time, so I was doing three different movies and playing three different characters.

TPH: Straw challenged the idea of strength. What do you think the cost of [Black women] being so strong all the time is?

TT: I don’t even think I can get into that without getting emotional, because Black women are strength. Is it really a challenge, or is it just muscle memory?

TPH: Girl.

TT: We are warriors of love and warriors of strength.

TPH: There’s that DNA that has been passed down from the ancestors that is just innately enough. We can take a licking and keep on kicking, but still keep our joy. The devil is trying to put you on the back foot and keep you depressed, but your fight back is that joy. And can’t nobody take that from us, no matter how much we get knocked down, no matter how much we’re underpaid.

TT: We have joy in us, and grace. One thing I want to share with Black women is that it’s okay to speak your mother’s piece. We’re not going to be silenced.

TPH: That whole thing I did with pay inequity—there was a part where I was trembling when I was asked a question. [But] nothing changes if we are quiet, nothing changes if we speak amongst ourselves in a dark shadow. We have to be loud about it. I was nervous because I like to be under the radar. The roles that you pick, the music that you choose to do—do you see that being effective in social change?

TT: I honestly think that it’s bigger than just music. I think our voices play a big part in change, because we had to run so they could walk. You doing what you did might have got you under a lot of scrutiny, but it needed to happen. That is a social change, taking that risk, being transparent and stepping up. I think that’s the most important thing, because sometimes women out here don’t feel safe unless they hear from a celebrity that they’re going through the same things. You addressed something really real, and that’s another thing I don’t like: the fact that you did not receive grace. Because some shit had to go down for Taraji to take it here. And that’s what I mean about the level of grace we give before we even speak out. You’re pushed into the corner.

TPH: That’s why I will never, ever, get into a public argument with another woman, especially another Black woman. [If] I got a problem with you, we going to pull it to the side, and talk about it over there. I’m never going to speak ill of her in public, because if we don’t stick together, nobody’s going to come and save us.

TT: Nobody.

TPH: A lot of times when we’re crashing out or having a mental break, we’re treated like trash. We’re not seen as humans. You’ve been vocal about speaking out about record labels. Do you feel like you caught backlash from that?

TT: I don’t regret that. Nobody’s gonna change my mind for me in the moment—I took that faith, walk that step, I only follow one voice. I still have questions, but I didn’t have questions for God because I do not question him. I’m scared, but I’m trusting, and you are leading me the way I need to go.

TPH: I love faith. When your voice shakes, that’s when you should speak out. When your knees tremble because you want to go left while everybody’s going right, that’s when you need to lean into the left.

TT: God’s game is a patient game. It’s a game I’m willing to play.

TPH: I know his timing is better than mine.

I do have a bone to pick with you—you ain’t no auntie, because then that makes me grandma. [Laughs]

TT: Well, I have an old soul. I’m really nurturing. I realized when I started directing—me and my partner—we just always coddled everybody. We were always a safe space for artists and creatives to be, because I was an artist myself. I love being Auntie.

TPH: I hate that when it comes to women, we shine away from age. Baby, we get better with age.

TT: I literally keep saying, I can’t wait to turn 40. I know I’m gonna be fine as hell. I’m already in my mumu. I don’t want to be bothered, I want to light my candles.

TPH: Light those candles. I want to ask you this [because] you definitely are going to be one of the greats—you already are. How do you evolve while maintaining what makes you special as an artist?

TT: Honestly, I really think that I gotta give it all to God. When it’s your purpose, it’s nobody else’s, and you’re going to stay in your purpose. You want to know why? Because that’s where I have you, you have this time to do it, and you’re going to do it. I really think that he’s just not done with me yet.