They may play a loving husband and wife duo, but as we've come to learn, things weren't always easy breezy when it came to Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross' off-camera dynamic. Here's what the former Black-ish star had to say.
The 51-year-old sitcom star rehashed the old tensions during an interview with Parade, and let's just say it's left some fans shocked. "We laugh about this now, but Tracee didn't like me for maybe ten years!" the actor confessed. According to Anderson, the decade of the cold shoulder Ross gave him all pointed back to their first time meeting, which happened at the 2005 Vibe awards. While the pair hosted the event together, things did not get off to a great start, thanks to a wisecrack made by Anthony.
"As we were walking onto the stage, there was a loud sound over the speaker, and I said, 'Tracee? Did you fart?'" and while Anderson assured us that the audience loved the joke, one person, in particular, was not a fan of the ad-lib commentary. "What I did not know is how offended Tracee was by that comment," the Black-ish star confessed. Flash forward to 2011, and Anthony found himself on Ross's turf as he guest-starred in her sitcom at the time, Reed Between the Lines. And the actress hadn't forgotten what had happened.
According to Anthony, Tracee would leave the set every time he had a close-up, hollering, "The stage is Anthony's!" as she walked off. Still unaware of the bridge he burned, Anderson thought it was a sign of respect. But in reality, it was Tracee's unwillingness to be around him, which carried over into the first season of Black-ish filming. "She really didn't like me until we were midway through the first season... and so we laugh about it now," Anthony said. "But today, there's nothing that I would not do for Tracee." From enemies to co-stars and then to lifelong friends, Anthony certainly dug himself out of the hole and back into Tracee's good graces.
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