Since her first, award-winning performance in the off-Broadway play “Ruined,” the actress and daughter of famed actress Phylicia Rashad and former football star-turned-tv anchor Ahmad Rashad has carved her own path in and out of the entertainment industry. She is a four-time Tony-Award nominee, one of the stars of the critically-acclaimed Showtime series, “Billions” as well as a beloved favorite among her fans.
But what drives this beautiful 33-year-old actress?
“I’m a Sagittarius,” she laughs. [Sagittarius’] like information and we like to learn new things. I’m about expansion. A lot of moments of growth came to me because of questions that came up — not because somebody told me that I should do this or think this way, but [because] a question was posed. And by me having to try and contemplate that question, that’s what led me to a new place of growth, because I was able to find it for myself.”
Daughter to stage and screen vet Phylicia Rashad (Clair Huxtable on “The Cosby Show” and the first black woman to win a Tony for best actress in a play in 2004), she grew up watching her mother at work and knew from a very early age the commitment that a life in acting demanded.
“[My mother] took me everywhere when I was little, so I got to witness the work,” she says. “All of the effects of the work that you do, the red carpets, the glitz and the glam and the shows—those are super fun, don’t get me wrong, but I would be in rehearsal watching her start from a table read and then I would watch all the way up to when she’s onstage opening night. It really affected my work ethic at a young age. It wasn’t just all fun.”
Even though her mom gave her space to dream and become anything that she wanted to be, there was already a seed of acting planted in Condola that began to grow at a young age.
“It was never a question of becoming an actor. I always knew early that I wanted to become an actor, since I watched my mom in rehearsal. It was like, Oh I can’t wait to do that! It was something that became a part of me, but I didn’t train in it. In terms of what I actually was doing, I was training as a