Trust Your Creativity with Mahershala Ali

Mahershala Ali grew up in Hayward, California, just outside Oakland, in the 1980s. His mother had him when she was sixteen, and he describes her as intensely focused on his spiritual well-being above all else. Church retreats, long Sunday services, and mandatory prayer before school were the rhythm of the house. As a kid, he bristled against it. He wanted to be out with his friends, dating, playing ball. But looking back, he says he is grateful. "Where I'm at is not perfect, but I appreciate where I'm at and I appreciate my journey to where I'm at. And I think it would be hard to be here if I had sort of free reign in the way in which my nature wanted that as a kid."

His father was a different kind of influence. He was a musical theater performer who won a national dance contest on Soul Train in 1976 and went on to perform in shows like Dreamgirls and study at Alvin Ailey and Dance Theatre of Harlem. Ali saw his father's career up close and it demystified the arts for him. "I always saw my father hustling and doing workshops and picking up extra work," he says. "I had such a respect growing up for that grind." His father died when Ali was twenty, just as Ali was starting to discover his own creative voice through poetry and a college theater production. The timing was uncanny. "He got the bug," Ali remembers his father telling friends. "He got the acting bug."