a conversation with Jada Henry
Actress and author Jada Henry on community, family, and creativity.
Meet Jada Henry. Author, actor, but most importantly my friend. The first one to keep me accountable and embark on this new project of photography, writing and creative collaboration.
After doing a quick little photoshoot on the UWS, I left with the sense that I needed something more. Something that could showcase who Jada Henry is as a person and as an artist. Something that aligned with how I wanted to express my creativity. Through my eyes, started in partly because of people frequently telling me that my instagram profile felt like seeing the world…through my eyes. But also, it mainly started because of Jada. Her newsletter So, Hear Me Out... was shared with me, as a means to express my support for her work. And next thing you know, here we are, the first in this series: a conversation with Jada Henry.
At first I thought about doing a video profile on her. However my lack of skill for editing combined with what I wanted to portray did not fully connect. We exchanged a few ideas over text, we knew we wanted to do a night shoot so Jada suggested the AMC by Lincoln Center. A few weeks later I told her I had an idea about writing a column and asked her if she was open to the idea of an interview. She agreed and we met the following week at the Westside Restaurant. Typically, profiles on artists are made whenever they have a “breakout" moment that puts them on the map or in the mainstream. My intention with this series is to show artists/creatives at the beginning of their journey and collaborate with them in capturing a conversation more so than a structured interview.
We finally decided what we wanted to convey. A behind the scenes, early 2000s vibe but elevated. So, here we go…
What laid the foundation for community for you and how has it shaped your outlook in life?
“I love community” she says, as if she already knew what my first question was going to be. In the few times we’ve talked together, Jada has always highlighted the importance of building and knowing the people in her circle. “My parents have always instilled this outlook in life that I am capable of doing anything I put my mind to and if you fail, you will always have us to fall back on, but you use your agency to try again”. Jada, decided to move to New York for college. It was definitely not the norm for her family but for her it was necessary.
“I had an amazing childhood and I always recognized how blessed I was to have a childhood that wasn’t necessarily romanticised but met all of the positives of romanticization. I feel I was able to really immerse myself in childhood wonder.” She smiles, her head slightly tilted down as her eyes narrow in cementing the fact that her childhood was anything but boring. She describes her childhood self as a “daydreamer”. “My family knows how to tell a story” she says. You can tell that with Jada her family is the foundation of her decisions and how she moves forward, the city is just an extension of fostering that community in her new relationships.
“At the end of the day I believe time is better spent talking to a person and getting to know what’s going on in [their] life and how [they’ve] actually been, than me… doing what? Typing on my phone?” We share a look, of mutual agreement. She knows that I know exactly what she means: to be there for a person and show that you care, in her words “its normal for me to extend that warmth and care to others”.
In what moment did you decide, okay, we’re going to do this, we’re going to commit to acting?
“Being settled and feeling as if I was in a comfortable position to leverage my dreams with my practical life. I always wanted to be in New York […] to be self-sufficient”. Jada gives this explanation with pause. “I was like okay, so you’re comfortable, don’t get too comfortable, go ahead and go after the aspiration that you’ve always wanted” she says. This doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a sense of humor though. “You don’t know how to drive” she adds, “but you know enough, its go time”. Stability. Unlike many actors with stories of moving to LA or to NYC with less than enough money in their bank account or with little to no support, Jada decided to pursue acting when she knew she could hone into her stability. Stability is what let herself go. Stability meant no longer having an excuse. “This is my career, it takes priority and it took me a long time for me to get comfortable with that because it is something that isn’t stable.”
Which came first acting or writing?
“Performance came first, but performance was just an extension of my storytelling in my head. I have all these great stories to tell, I have all of these vivid images of things that I would love to see created… I have to share it somehow”. She adds, “so that’s where the writing came in, I put pen to paper just so I could access this other form of storytelling in my mind.”
Your newsletter so, here me out… has extensive references of pop culture, but you also tie these references with critical thinking, how did this intersection of frameworks start for you?
“Ten plus years of twitter was enough for me.” She laughs without missing a beat. “When I tell you, I was there. For all the historical moments in twitter history I was there, that’s how I formed my sense of comedy through the antics of twitter”. In a now deleted account, Jada built a 10k following and started a smaller account in 2017. “I wiped it off the face of the planet.” It was her adolescence completely accessible online. Jada started a new account in 2020 and couldn’t do it anymore because “I felt my brain rot, a little bit.” With Jada there is always depth, their is always substance, “I was tired of seeing tweets without critical thought… and I didn’t like it how it was making my thought process in my critical thinking short form.”
Acting relies in some shape of form on how others perceive you, how do you come to terms with that?
“I’ve had points of contention of people perceiving me in a different way, positively by societal standards but a different way than my actual reality, when it took form in socioeconomic status I usually got faced with the grunt of people projecting their insecurities onto me.” She references an anecdote in her newsletter where she expresses this misconception take shape, and being aware of it in her childhood.
“People are working with a small portion of what they know and are not looking at it in its scope, they want to fill in the blanks rather than accepting what you give them.”
“I’m not [writing] for anything or anybody but myself, if you resonate with that wonderful, I just have to say it for my own peace of mind, for me to put my own inner dialogue on paper."
Have you always felt that there are things that you need to say?
“In a sense, I used twitter as my diary, and I do have diaries, so I started my Substack because I don’t want these critical thinking points to just flutter away with the wind and I can’t access them […] I want to have this to look back on.”
And lastly, what do you think makes an artist?
“Authenticity and the will to play, you have to have the desire to put the work behind in being an artist, not to be a successful but just to be an artist you have to bring intention behind. As long as you’re ready to play and grow then there you go.”
Jada Henry published her first fiction novel, The Principles of Good Taste and Ornament in 2020. Most recently, Jada wrote F14 Entertainment's tenth film, Candle Sweat and also runs the ethical humorist newsletter So, Hear Me Out...
With love,
Isabella & Jada