Jodie Turner-Smith opens up about raising a biracial daughter
The actress said she "had a lot of resistance to becoming a mother."
Jodie Turner-Smith recently got candid about raising her biracial daughter Janie whom she shares with husband Joshua Jackson.
In an interview with ELLE UK published Monday, the "Queen & Slim" star opened up about her initial hesitancy to becoming a parent and how her 2-year-old mixed-race daughter is "going to have a completely different experience" than she did.
"I had a lot of resistance to becoming a mother," she shared. "And, throughout my life, I always said if I were to have children, I wanted to have Black, Black babies so that I could affirm them as children with the love that I felt I needed to have been affirmed with by the outside world."
However, Turner-Smith, 36, had a change of heart after falling in love with her husband.
"We talked about having kids," she continued. "To decide not to have a child with somebody you love, just because they're white, was insane to me. But, at the same time, I did have this mini pause, where I was like, 'She's going to be walking through the world not only having an experience that I did not have, but looking like people that, in a way, I'd always felt a little bit tormented by.'"
The "Murder Mystery 2" actress explained she eventually realized the birth of her child served a bigger purpose in her life.
"Now that I've got this little, tiny, light-skinned boss, I feel like it's the universe teaching me lessons," she said. "I've been given a daughter who looks this way to heal my own conversations around colourism."
Turner-Smith and Jackson, 44, welcomed their daughter in April 2020. Shortly after the arrival of her child, Turner-Smith reflected on pregnancy and motherhood in an Instagram post.
"Moth·er /ˈməT͟Hər/ : A fantastic voyage that begins in wonder and transformation," she wrote in the caption. "I will never forget how this felt and now won't soon forget how it looked."
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