Tracee Ellis Ross has been about celebrating Black hair for the longest.
She loves Black hair so much that she even has her own hair care line, “Pattern.”
So, why not a docuseries showing off the beauty of Black hair? That’s precisely what “The Hair Tales” is.
In “The Hair Tales, Ellis Ross and Angela Davis weave through the journey of the Black woman’s connection with her hair.
Davis and Ross both executive produce and narrate the series.
“Hair is a portal into the souls of Black women, it drives straight to the center of who we are,” Ross said in a statement. “Our goal is to share this vibrant community, where we hold a sacred space for each other. Like many women, I can trace my own journey to self-acceptance through my hair. This series is personal and universal, American and global. It is a love letter to Black women.”
The series will broadcast on Hulu in partnership with the Oprah Winfrey Network, with Winfrey also serving as an executive producer.
“There is a story in every curl, coil, and kink of our hair. This show will be a dynamic adventure through these stories of ancestry and innovation, politics and pop culture, ritual, resilience, and revolution but mostly reveal humanity. It will affirm Black women, inform others and inspire everyone,” said Davis.
Production for the series will begin this year, and the series will drop sometime in 2022.
“As a kid, I relaxed my hair, I went and got blowouts every Saturday at a salon, I tied my hair so tight into a ponytail trying to make it straight and slick like everybody else—trying to make it look bouncin’ and breezin’ and ‘easy breezy’ like all the commercials said. There was a Black hair salon called Joseph’s that was four blocks from us,” Ross said of her own hair journey to Byrdie.com back in February.
“We would go every Saturday. Even though in my family I had examples of many women who wore their hair in its natural form, and it was around in our world and community, I was a teenager—so, I’m not looking to my mom for what’s cool. I’m looking to magazines, and music, and television.
“There were so few examples. I could count on my hand. I remember Rae Dawn Chong, Neneh Cherry, Lisa Bonet, Lisa Nicole Carson, Cree Summer…there were a handful of women that I saw, but it wasn’t a general thing, so I did all the things I thought I was supposed to do to try and make my hair cool, make me loveable, make me pretty, make me likeable by guys—the whole thing. So, when I started the journey of understanding and loving my hair and my curls, it was a process.”
