With the invisible enemy lurking and no clear sign as to when it would be safe to resume her music career, it was an obvious and welcome decision to move forward as an actress during such tumult.
“I was really happy to be busy again,” she says with a sigh of relief. “I’m very grateful. I was out of work as an artist. We couldn’t tour. We could not do shows. I didn’t want to do any club dates, though Atlanta was wide open a lot of last year. [But] I didn’t want to do shows. I guess I could have done certain things that I felt would not be wise. … So this pivot was not only necessary, it was welcomed to be a student and to dive more into this craft and to learn and grow even more. I was grateful for many reasons and to just be busy because I literally sat still for seven, eight months.”
With a ton of video shorts and cameos to her credit, Hilson’s first legitimate acting role came in the blockbuster film Think Like a Man in 2012. Her next opportunity surfaced on the set of Riddick in 2013, then Almost Christmas three years later. While singing and songwriting were still very much a passion of hers during that four-year span, the acting bug was biting with serious intentions.
“I always wanted to act,” she says with clear sincerity. “It was hard in my music career to find the time. I would do cameos because that’s all I had time to do. I wouldn’t audition. It’s like my whole life was taken up by my musical endeavors. So, once life did slow down when I stepped away from music, I think this spark just occurred.”
Tha spark was accentuated with her first role as a female lead in the made-for-television film, “Don’t Waste Your Pretty,” which aired on Feb. 28, 2021.
“The fact [is] that it kind of came back around in a real way. Now I’m in lead roles. I’m super, super grateful, but I’m not thinking as much about music these days. We’ll see what happens over the next few months or years.”
Until then, Hilson’s devout fans will have to relish the memories she created on her award-winning, Billboard-charting projects, In a Perfect World and No Boys Allowed. And, finally, after nearly a decade of battling depression, Miss Keri Baby finally got that old thang back because, well … cream always rises to the top.
Story by N. Ali Early
Images courtesy of TV One
