The Gift of Gab

Her odd-girl-out past. Her ambivalent relationship with exercise. Her unrelenting quest for roles that mean something, dammit! Gabrielle Union, the star of Being Mary Jane and the new thriller Sleepless, is letting her hair down and letting loose

- Claire Connors

 

 

The door opens and out steps a striking woman in head-to-toe black, from baseball cap and cropped jacket to slim pants and ballet flats. She smiles and furtively pats the black leather tote on her shoulder.

“I came prepared,” Gabrielle Union says in a soft purr. “I’ve got a bottle of wine in here for after the shoot.” Stealth moves like this have been a recurring theme for the 44-year-old actress. Since her breakout role in the 2000 high school comedy Bring It On, Gabrielle (Gab to her friends) has glided from role to role, quietly raising her profile. In the past year, though, her momentum reached critical mass, with performances in the controversial slave-rebellion drama, The Birth of a Nation, the holiday comedy, Almost Christmas, and the new police thriller, Sleepless, opposite Jamie Foxx. On the small screen, the hit TV series she headlines, Being Mary Jane, is currently airing its fourth season.

That unassuming rise might also account for her down-to-earth and often startlingly uncensored style. For instance, when it was revealed last year that The Birth of a Nation’s star and director, Nate Parker, had been accused of rape in college, Gabrielle spoke out about her own sexual assault at the age of 19. Another source of her approachability, however, is surely her Midwestern pedigree. In her heart – and definitely in her football allegiance – Gabrielle is a country girl, born to a family from the predominantly black community of North Omaha and into a large network of relatives who have lived there for more than a century.