Find ways to cope with the stresses of life that are healthy. OS: I think as a community in general, I don't think we do enough to center self-care in a way that isn't just 'go get mani-pedis,' but also just take care of your mental health, take care of your wellbeing. What's the importance of having conversations about mental health when it comes to Black men? xoN: One thing that I love about 'Bel-Air' is that it normalizes conversations in the first season about anxiety and coping mechanisms, especially as it pertains to Carlton's storyline. I'm a much different Olly now than when I started, and I feel like I've grown in so many ways that I'm really proud of. A friend pointed out the other day that I shot 20 episodes of television, which when you put it like that, it's like along the way, I'm going to learn things. We're about to wrap on the second season. In that way, it's different because there's a feeling of mastery that comes with just doing it two years now. Every single day, when I wake up before I go to work, before I go to set, there's that pinch me, I hope I'm not dreaming kind of feeling that doesn't go away. There's the realization that your life is about to change in a way that is inconceivable and that is still a feeling that I experience every single day. I feel the same and different in a lot of ways, and from the moment I was cast, I think that there's an excitement that doesn't ever go away. Olly Sholotan: It's funny because I don't think I've ever changed how I felt.
xoNecole: How did you feel when you were first cast in 'Bel-Air' in comparison to you now amping up to wrap up production for the second season? I feel like as an artist, I'm in this space right now where I'm kind of becoming the artist I've always dreamed of being." I was literally just talking to Morgan Cooper ( Bel-Air creator/EP) about this earlier today. Because we're about a week and a half or two weeks away from wrapping on Bel-Air, there's kind of this energy of 'Holy shit, we did it,' but we did it again- twice. “Honestly, my mental health is doing great. He continued to tell me about the current state of his mental health before we dove into our candid conversation.
“I'm actually in a fitting right now, so if I have to take five seconds to put a shirt on, my apologies again,” Sholotan said during our phone interview for xoNecole.
Fast forward just a few short months later, I dialed into the conference line excited to speak with Olly once again. A good actor evokes emotion, but it takes a phenomenal thespian to take the audience on a journey filled with mental and psychological turmoil for the first time since Gossip Girl’s Chuck Bass.ĭuring our meeting, he shook my hand and greeted me with a genuine smile that was hard to forget. And, not too much to my surprise, he was the exact opposite of the character he plays in the series, Carlton Banks. I was already a fan of Bel-Air, so I knew exactly who he was when my friend introduced us.
"I hope it starts a really, really important conversation about that.The first time I met Olly Sholotan was at a Tier NYC fashion show during New York Fashion Week in Brooklyn. "You know, there is a difference between someone who's from Jamaica, someone who's from Nigeria, a Black person in England, a Black person on the West Coast of America, a Black person on the East Coast of America and so, I what I love about this character is it really, really showcases the damaging effects of disqualifying someone's Blackness based solely on their interests, based solely on how they speak, based on how they dress," he added. Even just you and I sitting here, I don't know your background, but I can tell you right now, we are both Black and we both have had different backgrounds in the Black community. "I think that as a community, we really need to come to terms with this very damaging idea that there is a singular Black male identity and if you do not fall within that, you are corny, you are an Oreo, you are this, you are that," he said. Speaking exclusively to Digital Spy, Sholotan spoke out on the damaging Black stereotype that there's only one way to be Black.
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