Ashley Madekwe Talks Body Shaming, “Salem” & The Truth About Corsets
Has Salem star Ashley Madekwe ever taken a bad picture? It appears not: the actress-slash-blogger has one of the prettiest image searches we’ve ever seen. On this episode of “I Yahoo’d Myself,” Madekwe tries to find one unflattering pic (it’s still cute), and chats with our own Nick Axelrod about everything from ditching her glam squad (”I’d rather spend my money on shoes”) to diversity in Hollywood.
On the latter topic, Madekwe says, “I know sometimes I’m not black enough for a role. They equate ‘black’ with a dark-skinned black girl. And I’m mixed race, so I’m not a dark-skinned black girl.”
That hasn’t stopped the Brit from scoring a string of big TV roles, most notably as publicist Ashley Davenport on recently canceled Revenge and now on Salem (Sundays at 10 EST) as 17th-century witch, Tituba. According to Madekwe, there’s just one downside to starring in the WGN America drama: the costumes, which include bone-crushing corsets. “They have to pull really tight to get anything out of it,” she explains, “so then you kind of have this unsightly FUPA thing at the bottom of the corset, which is why they wear big skirts to cover it, and then you can’t eat lunch.”
Speaking of food, we find out that the prolific instagrammer (@SmashleyBell) loves a good #eeeeeats pic and has an issue with the anonymous girls-holding-food Instagram feed @youdidnoteatthat: “It’s still body shaming in a different way.” Do you agree? Watch the video above and let us know in the comments!
Watch more episodes of “I Yahoo’d Myself,” here, including interviews with Courteney Cox, Shay Mitchell, Eva Mendes, and Kelly Osbourne.
