black-ish was renewed for its eighth and final season back in May, and Tracee Ellis Ross, who plays the Johnson family matriarch Dr. Rainbow “Bow” Johnson, says the final show will be a bittersweet moment for her.
“I’m ready for it to be the end, and also it’s going to be really hard. I mean, eight years we’ve watched the TV kids grow up. We’ve watched [Anthony Anderson’s] beard do tons of different things,” she tells Harper’s Bazaar.
“But also, I found my voice. It came before, but I really started using it during black-ish,” adds the 49-year-old actress.
Ross says the show has offered her “a different and larger platform” to speak out on issues of representation in media and political representation for women. That included hosting the second night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention and highlighting Kamala Harris‘ historic nomination for vice president.
black-ish premiered in 2014 and has earned three Emmy Awards. Ross won a Golden Globe in 2017 for her work on the show and, in doing so, became the first Black actress to win best actress in a TV comedy Golden Globe since Debbie Allen in 1983.
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