Role Recall: Jurnee Smollett-Bell on Her Journey From 'Full House' to 'Underground'
TV fans have known Underground star Jurnee Smollett-Bell since she was a child actor on Full House, Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper, and On Our Own (the sitcom she did with her five siblings, including future Empire star Jussie Smollett). “I was always stealing candy from the craft services. It was there for me to have, but I was like a candy thief when I was kid,” she told Yahoo TV when she stopped by to reminisce about her 25-year career. “At home I kept this massive box in my parents’ closet, and every single day I would fill my backpack with candy,” she said, laughing. “It was like my treasure box. I would go into their room and empty out my backpack into this box and try to hide it from my brother Jake, because he loved candy. I would bring him one piece of candy to be the cool sister, but the box was mine. But then one day, a bunch of ants found my box, and I had like thousands of pieces of candy by this point, and it all had to be thrown away. It was pretty disgusting.”
Luckily, the young actress bounced back. Smollett-Bell shared stories with us about shooting her memorable two-part guest appearance on Grey’s Anatomy and her roles on Friday Night Lights and Parenthood, as well as what it’s like working opposite a trained rat on True Blood.
Related: ‘Underground’ Review: A Vivid Saga of Slavery and Escape
On WGN America’s Underground, she stars as Rosalee, one of the slaves attempting to run more than 600 miles north for freedom on the Underground Railroad. “I’m so proud of Underground because it’s this thriller, it’s this action- adventure, it’s unexpected. People think it’s gonna one be one thing — they think it’s gonna be very depressing and downtrodden — and it’s empowering. You watch it and you’re like, ‘These men and women could overcome this. I have absolutely no excuse in my life for anything that happens to me. I have to go and make a change.’ It really does inspire that in you when you watch it,” she said. “We were doing a live-tweet during the premiere, and people were saying that watching it really made them realize, on one hand, how far we’ve come as a nation, but also, on the other hand, how far we have to go. By watching it, you learn that a lot of the stuff we’re dealing with now, it’s been passed on generation after generation. There’s still wounds that we have to heal as a nation.”
Though WGN America has yet to announce a Season 2 for the drama, which premiered March 9 as the network’s most-watched program in nearly 18 years, Smollet-Bell says there’s definitely more stories to tell since people went back and forth on the Underground Railroad rescuing others. But which characters will survive Season 1? “We’ll see. No one’s safe,” she said. “We had a text message thread among the actors, and after we would get every script we’d be like, ‘Am I still alive? Did I make it?’ Because people were dropping left and right.”
Underground airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on WGN America.
