It's been one year since a writer for the hugely popular show, "This Is Us," Jas Waters died. She was only 39. Beyond writing, she was a Chicago native, a friend to many, and an advocate for health.
The news of her death was confirmed by the This Is Us writers via their Twitter account on Wednesday afternoon.
"The entire #ThisIsUs family was devastated to learn of Jas Waters passing," the statement read. "In our time together, Jas left her mark on us and ALL over the show. She was a brilliant storyteller and a force of nature. We send our deepest sympathies to her loved ones. She was one of us. RIP @JasFly."
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Creator of the show, Dan Fogelman, also responded to the tragic news.
"This news took my breath away. Jas was absolutely brilliant and had so many stories still to tell. She made an indelible mark on our show and my heart breaks for her loved ones. RIP."
On This Is Us, Jas Waters had worked on the series fairly early in its run, contributing to 18 episodes between 2017 and 2018. She then went on to work as a story editor on Kidding, the subscription cable series on Showtime starring Jim Carrey which recently aired its second season on the network. As a write, Waters also contributed to the script for the 2019 movie What Men Want.
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Shortly after her passing, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner just released Waters’ cause of death, writing she had died by suicide. Reports are coming in that it could have been by hanging herself.
But how can this be? Jas was a beautiful Black woman, who was also successful in Hollywood with accolades from her peers and notable stars. It seems like she had everything going for her. So what happened?
Many take a look back at her social media and try to piece together some sort of reason or find the point when she might have begun to feel this way. Some see a few questionable areas where she may have been feeling like something's wrong. Take a look at some of her tweets from 2019 below:
Prior to her being a Hollywood writer, Waters ran a successful entertainment blog, FlyStyleLife.com, for three years and later served as a pop-culture columnist for Vibe magazine. According to her LinkedIn profile, she interviewed the likes of Ava DuVernay, Spike Lee, Jay-Z, Warren Buffett, Joan Rivers, Drake and many more throughout her career.
Under the name JasFly, she starred in The Gossip Game, a VH1 reality series centered around bloggers and other media figures covering the music industry.
"I’m very audacious. This was always the plan for my life, even before I knew it," she said in 2018 interview with Shadow and Act. "A billion things had to conspire together for me to get here. Listen, I was raised in an old folks’ home. I never had a traditional life; I never had a safe, cookie-cutter, predictable, affirming life."
Back in 2013, Jas was all over the interwebs with her 100-pound weight loss which inspired so many other women to lose weight and get healthy as well.
"My grandmother’s death was, for me, this incredibly heartbreaking gift," Jas said in a 2013 interview. "It was amazing to be with her when she left this Earth, but...
... I also got to see first hand what happens to your body when you don’t take care of it. It was a turning point for me. I started to feel like I’ve got to do something because I was physically in a lot of pain. It hurt to lay on my stomach and I slept on my stomach. It hurt to sit in certain chairs and climb up the stairs."
"I was like, ‘Okay, but I’m 27. I can’t live like this at 27.’ So finally one day I was at home in the middle of the afternoon and I got up and said I’m going to go do something and I put on the only sneakers I had. They were these old beat up shoes and were totally inappropriate for any working out but those were all I had and I decided I’d walk my subdivision. I came back and decided I’d do it the next day and the next day and that started my transformation.”
Co-stars for the show were quick to send their condolences upon hearing the news.
'This is Us' co-star Mandy Moore wrote on Twitter, "Sending love and light to @JasFly's family and loved ones."
Fellow co-star Susan Kelechi Watson wrote, "Incredibly shocked and saddened to have just received this news. Blessed Light, fly with the angels."
