A.J. Johnson will always be remembered as the cute girl next door who wowed audiences in films such as School Daze and House Party, or as the youthful mother raising a troubled son in Baby Boy.
But beyond acting, Johnson has now become one of Hollywood’s most trusted health gurus. With her brand, the A.J. Zone, she teaches the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Johnson recently sat down with rolling out to discuss the AJ Zone brand, her keys to fitness, and why she knew Taraji P. Henson would be a special actress.
“I’m A.J. Johnson and I’m so excited to do a pop-up workshop. It’s called Rock Your Better workshop. It’s produced by my company AJ Zone. I’m traveling the country helping anyone that’s interested in reaching for better, to go ahead and get to the better that their after,” she says.
Why was it important for you to do the “Rock Your Better” pop-up workshop?
It is really important to do this pop-up workshop idea as I travel around the country. I constantly get bombarded on Instagram and Twitter with people from all over the place wanting to train with me. So for me, the level of healthy living that I try to live is not found in just reading a book, or watching a TV interview, or even reading a magazine article. For me to get in front of people face-to-face is where the idea of this pop-up workshop came from.
When can other cities discover the pop-up workshop?
What’s so exciting about a po- up workshop is we’re popping up wherever it makes sense. We started in L.A. the beginning of the year, we’re now here in Atlanta, then we’ll probably head to Dallas, Houston or Chicago or New York. That’s the whole idea. We don’t know where we’re going next, but you have to watch because we could pop up in your city.
If you could ask one thing of your younger self, what would it be?
I would ask the earlier version of A.J. to trust all of who she was even then and to not dim her light for anything or anybody. I found that trying so hard to be an African American actress, even though I was a part of so many amazing projects, to be an African American actress is a box that you have to live in. I was really uncomfortable in that box. So once I stepped outside of that box and started really living in my truth and what I loved, life took off. I would tell the younger A.J. to trust the fact that she’s a little bored as an actress, she’s a lot bored with just doing the same thing as an African American actress. Go ahead and live outside the box girl. Go ahead and do it.
When it comes to healthier lifestyle choices, what would you ask your community?
The one major thing I would love to ask my community when it comes to healthier living is to actually take it seriously and realize that it’s not a situation where it can’t happen to you. Do not think cancer can’t happen to you, or high blood pressure can’t happen to you because you’re too young. I want my community to take healthy living much more seriously than that because it can happen to you. I want my community to not live a life that survives, but more so prevents a lot of these diseases that plagues us no matter how old we are. I lost both of my parents to cancer. Mother died when I was 16 and my father when I was just a little bit older. As hard as that is every day, especially on holidays, I want others to know that these diseases and these poor health situations can happen to you or your family members.
You got an opportunity to work with Taraji P. Henson in Baby Boy during a time when she was an unknown actress. What was your first impression of her talent as an actress?
In this business, there are always people that come along that you just know have something special. Taraji was one of those people. When I stepped on the set of Baby Boy, we didn’t have many scenes together, but I was around to actually watch her work. I watched her work ethic and I watched her degree of focus and responsibility. She was serious then. The other thing that makes Taraji special is she knew something that a lot of people don’t understand, which is you only really get one chance and one shot to do your best. That’s what builds a career of longevity. We uplifted each other a lot. As much as there are a lot of mountains, there are a lot of valleys in this business. But she never let the valleys get her down. Taraji’s been working since Baby Boy. So the fact that “Empire” has taken off and the project has been so great for her, I personally think this is just the beginning. Mark my words.
