Tracee Ellis Ross made it clear from the start that she didn’t want to be doing "lady chores" all the time on ‘Black-ish’.
The 47-year-old actress told the producers of the popular ABC sitcom that she didn’t want her matriarch alter-ego, Dr. Rainbow Johnson, to always be seen doing the laundry and cooking in every scene, because that’s not the message she wants to send out to people – that just because you are a woman, you should have to do all the house chores.
Ross – who is the daughter of music legend Diana Ross – told the Los Angeles Times’ ‘Can’t Stop Watching’ podcast: "What I did speak up about from the beginning was, ‘Why am I carrying laundry?’ ‘Why am I the person in the kitchen cooking right now, when this has nothing to do with the scene?’
"Even sometimes when it does have something to do with the scene. I started coining them as ‘lady chores.’ ‘Why am I doing the lady chores?’ ‘Can’t Anthony [Anderson] do the lady chore?’"
On wanting to change the perception that only women do housework, she added: "I don’t believe they’re ‘lady chores.’ I believe they’re house chores. And I don’t believe that we should assume.
"I believe every relationship is a negotiation between two people about what each of them feel comfortable doing, and I think the more that we portray that on television, the more that that becomes the reality out in the world, or matches the reality that the world actually is."
‘Black-ish’ is nominated for four awards at the 2020 Emmy Awards, including Best Actress in a Comedy Series for Tracee.
Meanwhile, the ‘High Note’ star recently admitted she has become "more herself" as she has aged.
The Golden Globe-winner feels she has turned from a "quiet demure, gentle woman" into who she is today and insisted she was never in her famous mother’s shadow and instead grew up in her "embrace".
She said: "As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more myself. And the more I am myself, the more my life looks like me … I used to think it was my job to be this quiet demure, gentle woman, who would listen and smile. It’s all over the movies. I feel like I grew up in her embrace, not in her shadow."