'Celeste and Jesse' actress Rashida Jones doesn't have any issues with her identity
theGRIO REPORT - The 'Celeste and Jesse Forever' star, Rashida Jones, talks love, identity, and the date-gone-bad she’s lived to write about...
“My dad is a very positive, loving person,” Jones remarks. “His whole thing is just about kind of showing up, and working hard, and the other stuff is kind of not up to you. The inspiration – and you know, being a vessel for inspiration – is just the reward for being there every day. So, I just try to adhere to that as much as I can.”
Jones’ mother, Mod Squad actress Peggy Lipton, has also been supportive of her career, and though the young star says she has previously struggled with her biracial identity, she’s since come to a place where she’s doesn’t feel defined by whatever bounds may exist. Instead, she feels motivated by the range of her individuality.
“I spent so much time when I was young in my career being limited by the way I looked because I wasn’t dark enough for these parts, and I was too light for this and I wasn’t quirky enough or I wasn’t this enough,” she recalls. “It’s weird; I think it’s more of a challenge for other people.
In many ways, Jones has always embraced her persona. In 1994, she publically rebuked rapper Tupac Shakur for his derisive remarks about her parents’ interracial marriage. The two later reconciled when Shakur became engaged to her sister, Kidada, before his death. In her career, Jones has taken on a range of roles, most of which are racially ambiguous, and in her personal life, she has studied not only the practice of Judaism, a religion by which she was raised, but also Hindu culture. In 2011, she was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.
So it seems for the actress, being multicultural is an asset.
“I don’t have any issues about my identity,” she adds. “I relate to every side of both sides of my family. I’m Jewish; I’m African-American; I’m Irish; I’m Scottish; I’m Polish; you know, there are so many things. I wasn’t brought up to distinguish. I was brought up to celebrate those things and I think that other people think that I should be settling into one way or another.”
But, she says, she refuses to abide by such constraints.
For her next project, a film titled Cuban Fury, Jones takes on the world of salsa dancing in a story about a washed-up dancer, played by Ian McShane, who gets tempted out of retirement by his new boss, played by Jones. Audiences can also look forward to season five of Parks and Recreation this fall.
Additionally, the actress has a several writing projects in development, and long-term aspirations to direct, if she can muster up the guts.
“I’m definitely interested in directing,” she says. “I have a similar relationship with directing that I do with writing, where I’m intimidated by it. I have a lot of respect for directors and I think that it’ll take me a little bit of a jump to get there. But I did with writing, so hopefully…Yeah.”
