July 8, 2022 – Yolonda Ross went all-in when she realized that the single mom she plays in Showtime’s acclaimed sequence The Chi has breast cancer.
In season four, episode seven, Ross, who plays Jada, shaved her prolonged hair on camera, bringing to existence the very right struggles her personality – and proper breast cancer sufferers – face before origin breast cancer treatment.
“After I chanced on out my personality became as soon as going to be going by cancer, the one thing I talked about about it became as soon as that I didn’t desire it to be a TV or movie cancer,” says Ross, 47, who’s also a writer, director, and activist who has starred in Netflix’s The Opt up Down, ABC’s How To Opt up Away with Abolish and Denzel Washington’s Antwone Fisher, ethical to title just a few of her roles.
“I didn’t want to moral build a scarf on my head and I had cancer. It became as soon as too essential a moment for that,” she says.
Ross’s preparation for the role began off-camera. She researched organizations in Chicago’s South Aspect akin to Equal Hope, the Tatisa C. Joiner Foundation, and the Center for Smartly being Equity Transformation (CHET), all of which are helping Shadowy females with breast cancer. That’s when she began learning about the health disparities Shadowy females with breast cancer face.
“I desired to sit down down down with females who had gone by cancer or are at the moment going by it,” she says. “Meeting with them became as soon as greater than I anticipated. They touched me greater than I became as soon as awaiting to be touched.”
Speaking about the emotional facet of breast cancer became as soon as especially foremost to Ross.
“There’s talkin