'Grown-ish' Cast Reveals How Their Characters Mirror Real Life

The Season 3 midseason premiere of Grown-ish airs on January 21, 2021. As fans wait for more new episodes of the beloved series, they can rest assured that the stars of the show are confident they are showing an accurate portrayal of a normal college student’s life.

Source: Kelsey McNeal / Getty

In an effort to keep things as real as possible, the show doesn’t shy away from covering topics like relationships, sex, and drugs–because that’s what’s going on for real-life college students.

“That’s what we’re talking about now amongst our peers and with our friends. The show wouldn’t be relatable if we somehow ignored that or tried to act as if it didn’t exist,” Chloe Bailey explained while speaking to Complex. “I feel like [now] more than ever our peer group, we’re getting so involved in politics and standing up for ourselves and using our voices, and I think it’s really important that what you see on TV is representing that and is being portrayed, so I’m happy that we’re on a show that does that.”

Another star on the show, Luka Sabbat, echoed the same sentiment.

“These are things that every kid our age is going through,” he added. “We live in a very political time. A lot of things are being hypersexualized, a lot of people are discovering their sexuality. A lot of kids with the internet, with this new ethos we live in. Kids don’t have to be of the same religion as their parents anymore. All this information is out in the open. So I think it’s cool to cover it all because these kids are out figuring it out for themselves as well.”

The show also lets fans see other issues encountered by real-life young people, which are also issues portrayed by the characters specifically because many of them are people of color. The trailer for the midseason premiere shows campus security putting Trevor Jackson’s character in handcuffs for his activism, accurately mirroring so many people’s reality–especially right now.

“It definitely felt weird having handcuffs on my body, for sure. But I’m an actor, so I try not to, but sometimes I can’t help that feeling. And that’s a fear of, that’s kind of ingrained when you’re young and Black, and your parents just tell you what it’s probably going to be like. And so it’s definitely was something I had to get used to,” Jackson said about the episode. “But I think it was good to see because it is real, and it happens all the time, unnecessarily as we all know. I think it was amazing to shoot something like that, especially with all that’s going on in the world. It’s just on topic, on-brand. And I’m glad that I feel like we’re just on it as a show.”