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feat

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L RICThis Is

If there were only four words to describe Lyric Ross, who plays Déjà on NBC’s This Is Us, they’d be humble, hilari-

ous, and hella talented. Of course, there’s so much more to this 14-year-old Chi-Town native — read on to get to

know her a little bit better.By Andréa Butler

Photography By Fernando FabrisStyling By Katie SchupplerMakeup By Capri Latimore

Hair By Lalitha Arnold

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This Is

Earrings: Tribeca BoutiqueNecklace: Lori’s Shoes Jacket & Top: LBD The Little Black Dress[ ]

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mg! Are you …?” asks one of the front desk receptionists from

across the room, cupping her mouth in surprise at seeing Lyric walk through the revolving doors of the hotel. “Yes,” Lyric modestly smiles and nods. We’re in the lobby of Chi-cago’s brand-new Marriott

Marquis, and before I fully make my way over to greet

her and her mom, she’s already being recognized. “I remember

the first time that happened,” Lyric tells me later. “We were at the

airport, and there was this short lady who was walking behind us. She came up

and just kept on walking, looking at me, and she said, ‘You look like the girl from This Is Us — Déjà.’

And I said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s me!’ And she was like, ‘Oh my god! You do such a good job!’ And I was like, ‘Thank you!’”

This newfound fame is still a bit unbelievable to Lyric, who sees herself as a regular eighth grader, who goes to regular school, and still has to clean her room. And tbh, she really is. As we sit down to lunch in the hotel’s restaurant, Woven & Bound, we bond over all sorts of regular girl things like our mutual dislike of tomatoes (unless they’re diced super small), our penchant for laughter, and our shared love of food in general. Today, she’s having the Vice District Burger, which turns out to be a beast of a sandwich, complete with grass-fed beef, pork pâté, avocado, a fried egg, cheddar, and black garlic aioli, wedged in between a brioche bun. I’m having the quinoa bowl (sans black beans) to balance out the air-port food I’d eaten the day before. “Well, I had something healthy earlier, so I’m done,” Lyric declares. And with that, we prepare to dig in — to our meal and our conversation.

“I didn’t believe that I got the role,” Lyric says when I ask her how she found out she’d landed a part on one of the most popular television series out right now. “I’m so serious,” she continues. “It didn’t hit me until like 10 minutes later. I was like, ‘I got the part!’ It was crazy.” Her character Déjà is a 12-year-old girl who’s suddenly thrust into the foster care system, ultimately ending up in the home of Randall and Beth Pearson (played by Sterling K. Brown and Susan Kelechi Watson) and their two daughters. It’s an intensely emotional role, as Déjà deals with adjustment and trust issues, among other struggles.

To get into character, Lyric studies Déjà’s background and uses that information to think about what she might be going through and what she might be thinking in a particular situation; Lyric says her mom helps her with a lot of that. One such situation is when, in a show of rebellion and heartbreak at perceived betrayal, Déjà chops off the cornrows Beth Pearson had styled for her out of anger that

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Jacket and Top: Lori’s Shoes[ ]

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Beth, after promising not to tell anyone of the chat they’d had and the alopecia spots Beth had found during their haircare bond-ing sesh, ended up sharing their convo with Randall. Without a word, Déjà grabs the scissors and cuts close to the scalp. Then, she takes her seat at the breakfast table, shocking the family with what she’d done. What she cut wasn’t a gang of extensions the on-set hair stylist had put in Lyric’s hair

and followed up with a TWA wig, either. It was all real, and so were the emotions.

“It was funny because we were at the [beauty] shop, this is like right before we were about to go and do the callback, like go on the flight, so we can go to L.A. I was getting my hair done and everything,” Lyric explains. “My mama came up to me, and she was like, ‘Ok, so [the script] says right here that you have to be willing to cut your hair.’” At that moment, thoughts every Black girl has when deciding whether or not to cut the hair she’s finally gotten to a length she loves started running through Lyric’s mind. “Before that, I was like, you know, I’m never cutting my hair. I love my hair! And I know God heard me say that. It was like, ‘Are you serious, Lord?! You’re really doing this to me?’” she laughs. Obvi-ously, she went through with it, but on the real, she’d convinced herself the cut would probably be more like a bob, so NBD. It wasn’t until she’d gotten to set that she found out what was really up. “I wasn’t ready for that,” she admits. She also wasn’t quite ready for how far she’d have to go to

rep those alopecia spots — they were legit shaved into her scalp for authenticity.

What you may not know, though, is while Lyric felt some hesitation at these script surprises, ya’ girl has been rackin’ up the receipts in preparation for an opportunity to go so hard for such an important role for more than a decade. Her mom, Brandi Smith, remembers when Lyric was barely

2 years old, she was already beginning to study what would become her craft, imitat-ing the tone and facial expressions of her favorite cartoon characters. “She knew every line and the way she was doing it … she was so passionate about it,” Brandi says. So, three years later, Brandi enrolled Lyric into a nine-month class at John Robert Powers, an acting, modeling, sing-ing, and dancing school, which has major connections with agents, opening the door for auditions. Lyric snagged her fist print ad at the age of 8, a television commercial at the age of 9, and a few small roles on shows, such as Sirens and Chicago Fire in the years leading up to now. “It’s been very interesting ‘cause I’ve never done anything like this before. It’s a totally different expe-rience than doing one episode for a show,” Lyric says of her come-up. “[The cast of This Is Us is] so nice and welcoming, and I felt like I was their friend!”

If it weren’t for a few twists of fate, though, Lyric may have found herself on a slightly different path. Two years ago, she actually filmed the pilot episode of Showtime’s The

Chi. But when there was a switch in direc-tors, that pilot was scrapped, and the original cast was told to re-audition. Lyric did get a callback, but soon after, she received an e-mail saying the show had decided to go a dif-ferent route. She cried at having to take that L, but just one month later, she was called to audition for This Is Us. “God just set me up,” she testifies. “He really set me up!”

It’s easy to see that Lyric is only beginning what’s destined to be a mad successful jour-ney. And while she is thoroughly enjoying her present, she’s got a few ideas for her fu-ture, too, like working with Viola Davis and Meryl Streep, starring in a Marvel superhero movie, and playing Lauryn Hill in a biopic. “That would be dope,” she says. “I wanna be in a true story, but something that’s got a ‘90s vibe or any ‘80s vibe. They got all the good music and soundtracks.” She’d also like to work with Chadwick Boseman. “He’s been in so many Black leading roles, it’s like he’s kind of a role model to me,” she continues. “I wanna be in a movie representing Black people. I wanna be a part of stuff like that.”

Fiercely proud of the heritage she reps, directly impacting others who look like her is one of her main goals, a goal that, no doubt, will also make one of her other dreams come true — to go to Black Girls Rock! “I just feel like some little Black girls, they underestimate them-selves,” Lyric says. “They don’t think they’re as good as what they really are, as beautiful, and I’m like, well, that’s not true … I wanna show them that their melanin is poppin’.” s

“Before that, I was like, you know, I’m never cutting my hair.

I love my hair!”

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Earrings: Tribeca Boutique Necklace: Lori’s Shoes Jacket, Top & Jeans: LBD The Little Black Dress

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