Gabrielle Union Worked Through the Trauma of Rape 30 Years Later in Truth Be Told : 'Every Day Was a Trigger'
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Gabrielle Union's stirred up painful, but cathartic, memories of her own sexual assault.
The actress explained how she identified with the Truth Be Told season 3 plot — and how she worked through her own trauma in the process — at a Television Critics Association panel for the AppleTV+ show on Wednesday.
In the series, Union plays a woman who attempts to keep media attention on a list of missing Black girls who may have become victims of human trafficking. "I have the lived experience of being a Black teen experiencing sexual violence in the Bay Area," said Union, 50.
She acknowledged that she's been vocal about her own experience and has used her life story to act as an advocate. Still, relating to the plot felt different than speaking on her lived experience.
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RELATED: Gabrielle Union on Being a Rape Survivor: 'I Have Battled PTSD for 30 Years'
"I've been talking about my rape publicly for 25 years. But that's [a] first person account," said Union. "But to fictionalize it, and to figure out a way into the character using my experience, I just didn't know it was going to happen. It's my first time really doing that kind of deep, deep work."
Even some of filming for season 3 had direct, unexpected ties to Union's own assault. "There are literally locations ... that are literally locations that are a part of my past as it pertains to my rape. Every day was a trigger, and to be triggered for months on end, it literally frazzled me."
Though Union attempted to cope through filming it "did not work," she said. The filming ended up unearthing some of Union's own understanding of her assault.
"In July, it was my 30-year anniversary of my rape," she said. "And what I realized is that disassociation is real. And as much as I thought that I was present completely, and I knew all the facts, my brain could not allow me to know the facts as a teenager. And every day, it was like my brain kind of pulled back the veil of what really happened, and gave me the full picture."
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In Truth Be Told season 3, Union will star alongside her friend Octavia Spencer, who plays investigative podcaster Poppy Parnell. Together the duo will fight for justice in a community that isn't ready to recognize the devastation that's come to a group of high school girls.
It's a real-world issue that hits close to home for Union. "[We're] talking about the most marginalized of the marginalized that go missing and get brutalized, and no one gives a s---, literally — what that does to the individual, what that does to the family, what that does to the community. It's like suspending you in terror," she said. "And you're screaming, and no one cares to throw you a lifeline."
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Truth Be Told season 3 premieres Friday on AppleTV+.
