Taraji P. Henson: People are going to be mean, but you can control how you react to it. You give people the power when you succumb to them. You rise up in your power when you navigate through love, because love always wins. Love can calm the angriest beast. 

Shattering Doubt and Believing in Yourself: Taraji P. Henson & Sope Aluko – Episode #412

Narrator: Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. When we face self-doubt, we may find ourselves not believing in our own innate abilities, or we might even decide to turn away from our aspirations in the belief that we’re not “good enough” to get where we want to be. When we willfully stop listening to the voices that tell us we can’t do it, and replace our fears with faith, a transformative effect takes place that allows us to believe in ourselves again and realize that our dreams are worth chasing. 

Our first guest is the multi-talented Taraji P. Henson. Taraji is not only a renowned actress but also a dedicated mother, philanthropist, author, director, and producer. Though Taraji had dreams of becoming an actress, early rejection caused her to question herself, and move in a different direction. It took the words of her trusted father to remind her what she was made for, and to find the courage to chase her dreams. 

Later in the episode, we’ll hear from actress and filmmaker Sope Aluko. For over two decades, Sope built a successful corporate career. However, the passion for acting never left her. After the loss of her parents, and a time of personal reassessment, she awakened the dream in her heart and decided to pursue her first love of acting.

Let’s begin with Taraji’s story.

Taraji P. Henson: I’m Taraji P. Henson. First of all, I’m a mother, I’m an actress, a philanthropist. I am an author. I am a director, producer. I’m a good friend and a good human. 

Taraji’s Family: A Foundation of Love

I have a huge family. When I say huge family, my mother has seven other siblings, and they all have kids. And so all the cousins were very, very close. We spend a lot of time together.

I was a kid in an inner city, broken home. Even though my father was very much a part of my life, they were in two separate homes. My mother would send me to the South with my grandmother in the summers or on the weekends to the suburbs, which was good for me because it kept me out of the hood and out of the neighborhood’s kind of bad things that were going on. It gave me the best adaptability skills. I could go anywhere and make friends with anyone, because I came from a great foundation of love. And when you have that foundation, you can turn negatives into positives because you have great reinforcement at home. 

“I could go anywhere and make friends with anyone, because I came from a great foundation of love. And when you have that foundation, you can turn negatives into positives.” – Taraji P. Henson

Finding Inspiration After Rejection

I auditioned for Duke Ellington High School of the Performing Arts, and I did not get accepted. You don’t know how to quite deal with that rejection. And I honestly thought that meant I couldn’t act. 

So I was hanging out with a really good friend of mine. She’s very book smart, intelligent, and she’s mathematically and scientifically wired. I am not, but I knew I wanted to go to college, so I followed behind her, going to North Carolina A&T to study electrical engineering. And I failed pre-calculus. Pre-calculus, the class that prepares you for all that math you have to take. I failed it with flying colors, and that was my sign that that was somewhere that I didn’t have any business being.

Then I remember calling my dad. I was like, “I failed,” and he was like, “Good, I needed you to fall on your face so you could get to what you need to be doing in life and what you should be doing, and that’s acting.” So my father was really instrumental in allowing me to find my way. So I was very grateful for that, because I did find my way back to acting on my own. 

Making Dreams Come True For a Mother and Her Son

At the time, I was already a young mother. And the decision was, Should I go to New York to pursue musical theater and music? Or, was it going to be California for acting? And I just remember sitting and praying about it, talking to God about it. 

My father was very instrumental. I just remember him asking me when I graduated, “How do you expect to catch fish on dry land?” And I was like, “What are you talking about?” He was like, “The acting jobs, that’s your fish. They’re not here. It’s dry land here. You need to go to where the fish are.”

I just talked to God and I was like, “I need the best scenario for me and my son because now I’m making my dreams come true. But it’s not just about me anymore. I’m not single. I have a kid and I have to take my son into consideration.” And so when I had that talk with God, it was just very clear that L.A. was a better environment for me to raise my son. 

I didn’t have a lot of money, but I wanted to at least give him what my mother was able to give me when I was growing up, and that was my own bedroom, somewhere to play, somewhere safe. And I just felt like I could give him a better quality of life in L.A. 

My family threw me a party. We raised $700, and I got a buddy pass, and I packed up everything and moved west. And I think I made the best decision. Being a mom kept me very focused, laser beam focused, because I had no time to waste. I had to make dreams come true right away to prove it to my son. 

Eradicating the Stigma of Mental Illness

You’ve heard the saying God broke the mold when He made this person, made me. We are all uniquely different. God did an amazing thing by putting us on this earth. We’re all humans and we all look different. And it is our charge, as humans on this earth, to learn how to get along. That is what we’ve been put here to do. 

“God did an amazing thing by putting us on this earth. We’re all humans and we all look different. And it is our charge, as humans on this earth, to learn how to get along.” – Taraji P. Henson 

I have a mental wellness foundation that I started, I launched about five years ago, The Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation in honor of my father. What we try to do is to eradicate the stigma surrounding mental health in black and brown communities. 

That’s the challenge of being a human, learning how to love no matter what, to operate from a place of love, even when it’s hard.

The Value of Daily Connection

You have to connect with God daily. I don’t feel right unless I do. I read in the morning before I start my day, and I read at night before I close my eyes. And I’m in constant communication with God all day because something is always going to try you. You know, it’s life, you never know what’s going to happen at any moment. So I keep God close to me at all times, and I’m constantly in communication with God at all times. I’m nothing without God, like, the fact that I’m here? I’m blessed and I know why. 

“I keep God close to me at all times, and I’m constantly in communication with God at all times. I’m nothing without God, like, the fact that I’m here? I’m blessed and I know why.” – Taraji P. Henson 

I’d like to read an excerpt from Sarah Young’s prayer devotional, Jesus Listens, December 11th:

Mighty God, 

You empower me—infusing inner strength into me so that I’m ready for anything and equal to anything. Please help me remember that this inner strength comes through You, Jesus, through my connection with You. It comes to me as I need it—as I take trusting steps of dependence, keeping my eyes on You. This promise is a powerful antidote to fear—especially my fear of being overwhelmed by the circumstances I see looming ahead. No matter how daunting they may look, I can trust that I am indeed ready for anything You bring into my life. 

So when I’m feeling the strain of an uphill journey, I need to stop and tell myself the truth: “I have strength for all things in Christ who empowers me!” 

In Your strong Name, Jesus, 

Amen

Narrator: To learn more about Taraji P. Henson, follow her on social media, and be sure to check out her new children’s book, You Can Be A Good Friend, on sale June 18th. 

Stay tuned to Sope Aluko’s story after a brief message.

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Deepen Your Communication With God: Jesus Listens Notetaking Edition

Jesus Listens is the 365 day prayer devotional that people everywhere use to guide their prayer life and deepen their communication with God. Now, there’s a new way to keep up with your daily prayers, the Jesus Listens Notetaking Edition. This edition includes full text of Jesus Listens, written out scripture verses, and journaling space. Experience how intentional prayer connects you to God, changes your heart, and can even move mountains.

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Our next guest is Sope Aluko. Sope’s path to Hollywood was anything but straightforward. Despite her deep-seated love for acting, her parents guided her towards more stable professions, leading her to study engineering and marketing. Despite the challenges and the initial lack of support, she persisted, driven by her faith and a deep desire to give voice to the voiceless through her performances. Sope’s remarkable journey includes her experiences on the set of Black Panther, where she felt God’s hand guiding her every step.

Sope Aluko: My name is Sope Aluko. I was born in Lagos, Nigeria. I grew up and schooled for the most part in the U.K., and then I moved to the U.S. in 1996, where I have lived since. I am a tri-citizen of Nigeria, the U.K., and the U.S. I’m married to my wonderful husband, I have two amazing young adult sons who are both in college, and I am one of four girls. I’m an actress and I’m an emerging filmmaker. I recently wrote, co-directed, produced, and starred in my first short film called Chidera, which means in Igbo, “what God has destined.”

Sope Defers Her Acting Dreams for More Practical Paths

My father was a diplomat. And so we have the privilege and the blessing to live in various countries, everywhere from Tanzania and East Africa, Geneva, Switzerland, Trinidad, and Tobago, Indonesia. So at the age of ten, my parents decided it was best for us to be stationed in one place for schooling purposes anyway, and so I was sent off to boarding school in England, and that’s where I schooled right up until my master’s degree.

After my master’s degree, I worked in London for a few years, and then I decided to move to the U.S. to just pursue other opportunities there. And from as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be an actor, a performer—acting and singing were my creative outlets. I studied theater in middle school, and I was also in the school choir, which in reflection now is probably mirroring my father, who was in the church choir. Acting was definitely at the forefront of all of my aspirations and dreams. 

But unfortunately, my parents didn’t feel it was a sustaining profession, so they properly steered me away from that. I ended up studying engineering, and then I did my masters degree in marketing and product management. And then I followed that path in my corporate career for about twenty-five years in marketing.

I just reflect on it because I know that the reason why I was in marketing was because it was the closest thing I could get to being a creator. I was like, Okay, I’m still going to do my acting. And I was still actually doing acting classes when I was in corporate America, but I was doing them secretly. It was a bug. I got it, and I would do acting classes and things, and I wouldn’t tell anybody.

I worked in some really prestigious Fortune 500 companies, but I was so not fulfilled. The money was there, but it was just harder and harder to walk away from that, because that kind of defined me. 

A Great Loss Brings New Direction

The pivotal moment was when I lost my parents, and I first lost my father in April of 2006, after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease. And immediately after burying him, my mother was diagnosed with stage four cancer. I ended up being her caregiver for about two and a half years until she passed away in 2009. 

Losing those two people in my life was just really hard on me. And I actually fell into a deep depression. I always struggled with depression, but at that time, losing both my parents back to back kind of really drove me into an area that I struggled. It just kind of propelled me into something like, I kept on asking, “Okay, you’ve done everything. Education? Check. Lucrative corporate career? Check. Marriage? Check. Kids? Check.” And I just said, “Well, I want to do something for myself. I want to feed my soul.” And I literally was having those earnest conversations with God. And I was like, “Father Lord, I’ve done everything I was meant to have done. So can I just try?”

I didn’t tell anybody I was pursuing acting full time. I didn’t feel I had the courage to tell them. It became my alternative life. It was like my alter ego. It was a different persona. My husband didn’t understand what was going on. He felt I was still in grief, but he was like, “Okay, I don’t know, this acting thing is her hobby. I don’t know when she’s going to snap out of it. I’ll leave her for now.” But one year kept on rolling to two years and three years and four years. 

Much More Than Than Acting, Sope Creates a Voice for Others

I started from the ground up. I was an extra. I wanted to learn everything about the business. Humility was my thing. I was not going to go in it with any airs and graces. I blew through my savings. I blew through everything. I dropped travel, trained wherever I needed to train. But these roles that I booked, every single time I would pray to God, I said, “Lord, let it be a role that really speaks to me, that resonates with me.” And the beauty of being an actor—for me anyway, I’m a fairly shy person unless I get to know you—you get to live in these characters, these roles, and they fill me when I’m empty and I do the work and I’m preparing for an audition, and then I do the audition… I sometimes call it the Holy Spirit experience. I just believe that whenever you’re doing a role or a character that God has destined for you, He gives you the right tools and the right spirit to embody that role in the fullness that it needs to be embodied for whoever it is that needs to see it.

“These roles that I booked, every single time I would pray to God, I said, ‘Lord, let it be a role that really speaks to me, that resonates with me.’” – Sope Aluko

The roles that are the most profound for me are those that have allowed me to give voice to the voiceless. I love being a vessel of God to speak through my performance to people who can see themselves on screen and go, Oh, okay, so there is something, I’m not just going crazy, because that’s how it was for me when when I would watch film or theater and I would see things and I would sit there and I would not be able to move. And I think, Wow, isn’t that amazing that that person was able to deliver such a performance that spoke to me, like it was a voice that penetrated my soul?

My whole experience with Black Panther was just truly spiritual from the moment that I’d prayed for it years before. And then it came into being, and through that whole audition process and how I was seen and how I arrived on set and how I interacted with everyone there—and I will add as well that that year of 2018 is when I purchased my first Jesus Always book and journal, and I’ve never journaled before, but I journaled this, so it’s amazing how God works because He is a planner and He planned every single detail ahead of me. 

“It’s amazing how God works because He is a planner and He planned every single detail ahead of me.” – Sope Aluko

And so when I stepped onto the set, we started having those conversations. We as actors were talking about our experiences, about how we got to be on this, and it was amazing. There’s a lady that was there, Miss Dorothy Steele, this is her first role at the age of nine-two. She talked about her grandson saying, “Oh, they need a role for this tribal person, an elder from South Africa.” And she was amazing. We bonded over her stories. And she was like, “I can’t believe that God is not done with me yet.” And then obviously with Chadwick Boseman, he was such a true believer. Chadwick had stage four cancer, he was suffering but you would never know it. And it’s so funny, he’s a superhero, but yet God was moving in him in such a supernatural way that he did all the stunts. He was amazing. And he was the first one on set, last one to leave. He, as the number one person on the call sheet, was a servant leader. I really believe so. I felt that as I was thinking of him. Jesus was washing the feet of His disciples, and Chadwick felt to me that he embodied that spirit of Jesus where he would check on everybody. I mean on top of having the weight of being the number one person on this film and carrying that on his shoulders and dealing with so many things with the director and behind the scenes, and he still had time for every single individual on the set, whether it was a main actor or a PA or anybody. No one was little for him. I knew that God was showing me through him and other people, This is how you act. You always act according to being a child of the kingdom.

Believing That God Will Never Reject Us

I find that I have to surround myself with Him constantly. I am in Bible study fellowship, which I’ve been in the last ten, fifteen years, which is an in-depth study of the Word. I also have another prayer Bible study group with my church and I have a third Bible study group, and then I have Pray.com, I have Jesus Calling.

I wake up every morning… after prayer, I play music, and worship. I just feel that I have to be connected with Him at all times, particularly since I’m in an industry that is so hard and it’s so taxing and the rejection is real. And sometimes you have to remember that God has not rejected you, He’s your first love. That’s one of the things I liked about Jesus Calling, Sarah Young‘s books, because she had this thing about dependable trust. Dependable trust was always something that was just so big for me and my visuals. Because I’m a visualist, this is my hand always holding on to Jesus’s hand as a child and just not letting go. And I feel that Jesus Calling and Jesus Always, that’s what they do for me. I’m literally a child in His presence, and I’m constantly looking to Him to help me and guide me and remind me. And I love that they are anchored in Scripture, in verses. That is the most important thing that I have to say.

Jesus Listens, August 22nd:

Precious Jesus, 

Help me to trust You in the midst of a messy day. I don’t want my inner calm—my Peace in Your Presence—to be shaken by what’s going on around me. Even though I live in a temporal world, I know that my innermost being is rooted and grounded in eternity. When I start to feel stressed, I need to detach myself from the disturbances around me. As I stop striving to maintain control, You enable me to relax in Your sovereign control—and receive Your Peace that transcends understanding. 

Your Word instructs me to seek Your Presence continually! Please share Your mind with me and open my eyes to see things from Your perspective more and more. I love to hear You telling me: “Do not let your heart be troubled and do not be afraid. Take heart! I have overcome the world.” Lord, I rejoice that the Peace You give me is sufficient for all my circumstances! 

In Your all-powerful Name, 

Amen

Narrator: To keep up with Sope Aluko and her upcoming projects, follow her on social media.

If you’d like to hear more stories about following your dreams, check out our interview with Brett Young. 

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Next week: Chris and Lindsey Wheeler

Next time on the Jesus Calling Podcast, we’ll hear from parents and founders of the organization Bottle of Tears, Chris and Lindsey Wheeler. The couple shares their story of raising a special needs child, grappling with Lindsey’s own health struggles, and how God has met them in the middle of suffering time and time again. 

Lindsey Wheeler: When your life is really hard and you’re walking through a lot of long suffering and trauma, sometimes the kindnesses of God are little, tiny things. 

Chris Wheeler: The go-to phrase that God has given us as a couple is, “We’re going to make it.” That’s just kind of our assurance that we’re going to be in this together. We’re not giving up on each other. We’re not giving up on the story that God has written for us, and we’re just going to keep on persevering and moving forward.