Teyana Taylor is the moment! Teyana covers the latest issue of Vanity Fair, looking like Lady Liberty, if Liberty had a sick body. Teyana is obviously campaigning for her supporting actress Oscar, and she’s leaning into the process even if she doesn’t want to jinx it by talking about it. Teyana really is a multi-hyphenate – singer, dancer, choreographer, director, and award-winning actress. And she’s a mom with two young children. And she’s Oscar Isaac’s new bestie. And a million other things. In Vanity Fair, she touches on some of this, plus her divorce and her thoughts on the conversation about Perfidia Beverly Hills. Some highlights:

Her career began at 15. “I was one of them busybody kids. I did everything. I was in a choir and had my own Bible study class. I was running track. I was choreographing.”

Retiring from music five years ago: “Maybe it’s the Sag in me,” she says, referring to her astrological sign, Sagittarius. “We’re gonna pivot. We’re going to do whatever we put our hearts to. And I never had one thing. I was the dreamer that wanted to make my dreams a reality.”

The Oscar talk: “It’s so crazy, because I don’t like to jinx it. I get so shy when everybody starts talking about award season and stuff. Being with Sarah Paulson and Glenn Close and Naomi Watts and Niecy Nash and Kim Kardashian”—almost all of whom have portfolios full of nominations for their work—“it’s like, they’re all in my ear. Like, ‘You better get ready, you gotta get ready.’ I’m like, oh my God. I try not to get my head too wrapped around me, just trying to stay grounded and not getting to a place where I’m obsessed with the outcome.”

Answered prayers: “I remember when there was a time where I had nothing to balance. I couldn’t secure a movie role. I was shelved.” Faith has a strong place in Taylor’s life, and she describes waiting and praying that her dreams would come to fruition. “Every single prayer you’ve ever prayed has been answered. Here’s the answer. I told you, this was always yours. You just needed to do the work to get there and you needed to be patient,” she remembers saying to herself during those years when she felt her career stalling.

Her OBAA character Perfidia Beverly Hills: “I think one thing that everybody will be able to agree on is that she’s a badass. And she’s unapologetically herself. And when you see this woman”—who, after living a high-octane life of staging high-risk attacks targeting political figures and enterprises, is at home with her baby—“…even the things you don’t agree with, you’ll still empathize….It will never be a moment of judgment, because a lot of her mistakes have come from her being in survival mode dealing with postpartum depression and the title of being a strong woman—a strong Black woman. We don’t get the same amount of compassion as everybody else. We don’t get the same amount of grace as everybody else. Everybody just assumes we’re okay… I think with Perfidia, you see the results of people overlooking postpartum depression. You see how that makes her react. And you see this woman that still wants to shoot guns and still wants to be a revolutionary and she wants all of the things.”

Whether she thinks the script fetishizes Perfidia: Taylor tiptoes around the topic a bit, careful to not overgeneralize. “I think we don’t enjoy seeing the harsh reality, but this is what’s happening,” she says, avoiding getting too specific about what exactly is happening. “Another person interviewed me and mentioned something about Perfidia and how people felt like she was overly horny. And I’m like, do you realize the first thing we see of Perfidia is her having a gun to a guy’s head and he calls her sweet thing? Are you—are we watching the same film?” Taylor seems to see her One Battle After Another character as using her sexuality to her advantage rather than getting taken advantage of. Penn’s Lockjaw ultimately falls into her ploy, finding himself submissive to her sexuality.

On her longtime professional relationship with Kanye West: “I don’t have to agree with everything that he do or say, but I’m not going to, like, abandon him and be like, ‘Yeah, eff that motherf–ker.’ My brothers do sh-t that I don’t agree with…. I don’t get into none of that. If you want a real answer, you ask me. So if he asks me something, he knows he’s gonna get a real answer.” She continues on, speaking more philosophically about how she balances her authenticity and loyalties with the high-wire demands of fame. “I do my shit behind the scenes and do what I need to do to help. I’m in my business and I drink my water.”

Divorcing Iman Shumpert in 2023: “Divorce, to me, is you’re grieving the death of a living being. I think once children are involved, you understand the importance of really still having to show up for each other. At least for the next 18 years, and being the best co-parents that we can be.” But she maintains that she doesn’t “want people to start feeling scared of marriage, because marriage is a beautiful thing. One thing I don’t do is rewrite history. When I love, my love is real. So whatever you’ve seen was a real display of love until there was no more. And that’s okay.”

[From Vanity Fair]

I plan on using this in my own life: “I’m in my business and I drink my water.” Put it on a t-shirt! That’s a mantra, baby. She doesn’t condemn Kanye nor does she defend him. She makes it clear that she has some thoughts about his stupid ass but she’d rather say all of that sh-t to his face.

As for the conversations about Perfidia and the sexualization or fetishization of the character… in my opinion, Lockjaw fetishizes Perfidia (he also falls in love with her in a way) but the script does not fetishize Teyana or Perfidia. She’s playing a character who uses all of the tools at her disposal, including her sexuality. Perfidia is actually playing a femme fatale with Lockjaw, while Bob gets to see “the real Perfidia.” It’s remarkable how much nuance Teyana infused in that character in, what? Twenty minutes of screen time or something like that.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red and cover courtesy of Vanity Fair.