Tia Mowry-Hardict is opening up about a time where she and her sister Tamera Mowry-Housley were denied the chance to be featured on a magazine cover because of their race.
During an episode of Entertainment Tonight’s “Unfiltered,” the actress became emotional as she spoke about the discrimination she and her twin sister faced as childhood stars. “It was around ‘Sister, Sister’ days,” she recalled. “The show was extremely popular. We were beating — like in the ratings — ‘Friends.’”
“So, my sister and I wanted to be on the cover of this very popular magazine at the time — it was a teenage magazine,” she continued. “We were told that we couldn’t be on the cover of the magazine because we were Black and we would not sell.”
As “The Game” actress wiped away her tears, she said that the incident “still affects” her to this day. “But here I am as an adult, and it still affects me how someone can demean your value because of the color of your skin,” Mowry-Hardict said. “I will never forget that. I wish I would have spoken up. I wish I would have said something then. I wish I would have had the courage to speak out and say that isn’t right.”
She said the discrimination they faced led her to pour self-confidence in her 2-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son.
“To this day, I’m always telling my beautiful brown-skinned girl that she is beautiful,” Mowry-Hardict said. “And the same thing even with my son. I tell him how handsome he is, I tell him, you know, he is smart. Because I know what it feels like for someone to devalue your worth, and I don’t want my children to ever, ever, ever, feel that. And not have the strength, or the foundation, to not believe it. To believe that they are worthy.”
Check out the interview below.