'Empire' actress Grace Gealey: 'I was discriminated against for being light-skinned'

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America loves to hate Grace Gealey’s ruthless character, Anika Calhoun, on Fox’s hit series Empire.

The actress, who was born and raised in the Cayman Islands, recently opened up about her new TV role in an interview with Details magazine.

Gealey also revealed in the interview that she’s surprised about the colorism dynamic among black women in the United States.

“For me personally, it’s the whole light-skinned/dark-skinned dynamic [for women of color]. I mean, there’s competition among women everywhere you go. But back home we understand that you can look like a variety of things and still be from the same culture,” she said. “I’ve never felt like I was a light-skinned black woman. Never felt that way because we shared the same culture back home. But when I came to America, that’s when I started to feel that there was a lot of push-back from women. I was definitely made aware that I am light-skinned. I realized that was a thing here.”

She later opened up about about being discriminated against in the U.S. because she is light-skinned black.

“I was discriminated against for being light-skinned and there were a lot of labels. Some people assumed that guys might like me more because of my complexion or that I had it easier in general. Which is funny because I’ve been a victim of prejudice as well: There were times when I have walked into a Rite Aid at 12 o’clock at night and had the store manager stand in the corner and stare at me while I was looking at nail polishes.”

Follow theGrio.com’s Entertainment Editor Chris Witherspoon on Twitter @WitherspoonC.