Actress Meagan Good is opening up for the first time since her husband Devon Franklin filed for divorce in December 2021, and from the looks of it, she’s doing just fine.
In Essence’s latest cover story, the 41-year-old actress shared that she feels like she is “in her prime” following the high-profile split and says she’s in a “unique space” to take her career to the next level.
“I can still change people’s minds about me, and I don’t look at that as a bad thing,” Good told Essence in the feature story. “I look at that as a purpose thing.”
Good has been no stranger to controversy and has been publicly criticized for exuding too much sex appeal while she was with Franklin, who is a prominent preacher in Los Angeles. More recently, she was ridiculed for what some say was lightning her skin tone.
“I was like, I look so crazy I just have to sit in this, and let people think what they want to think, and there’s nothing I can do about it,” she said of about accusations of her bleaching her skin.
According to the Los Angeles native, sun-damage products were the cause of her skin appearing lighter adding that “I didn’t realize it at the time, but my concern with what other people thought about me was such a thing that I had to go through something like that where I literally had no other option, and I had to find my joy and my peace regardless of what everyone was thinking.”
She also revealed how “devastated” she felt after getting divorced from what she thought would be her lifelong partner. The couple went their separate ways after 10 years of marriage.
“That was rough because my biggest fear was what happened between my mom and my dad would happen to me, which is you’ve been with your husband for 10 years and you break up,” she said. “I would say, ‘I’m never getting divorced. I’m in it forever, good, bad, whatever it is, I’m never going to give up. You’re my person, I’m your person, that’s it.’”
She continued: “It took me a long time to understand that God didn’t do divorce,” she continued. “DeVon and I both have free will. So, I had to accept that God didn’t lie when he told me that was my husband. That was my husband. But he didn’t say we’d be together forever. God’s word remains true no matter what happens to you and if anything changes, it’s because sometimes life deals you cards you don’t expect or anticipate, but He’ll still bring you through it and He still has an incredible plan for your life.”
She recalls times when she would be ostracized for wearing revealing clothes – some even going as far as to judge her for wearing a Halloween costume.
“For years, I was scared to post Halloween pictures,” she recollected. “I would do it anyway because I’m never going to not do what I want to do. If I feel like it’s good between me and God then I’m going to do it regardless, but it was a lot of trauma because I was brave enough to do it anyway.”
Overall though, she said that her marriage to Franklin was a “beautiful journey” and is excited to transition into the second phase of her life.
“I think people are starting to get who I am,” she concluded. “I think for a long time they didn’t. And I had to get to a place where I stopped caring in order for me to walk into the place where people now are like, ‘No, I actually get her.’”
