Sophia Michaels
But she is clear on other aspects of her identity — including her family legacy. Young shares that her great-grandmother is still alive at 105 years old. And her daughter, Young’s grandmother, “speaks of her Mayan and mestizo blood, speaks of the mixing of people, you know, ‘This one looked like this. And this person looked like this. And this person was really short. And this person was really tall. And this person had this color eyes.’ And so there’s a sort of map of how that mixing happened. And in Belize, it happened a lot,” Young recounts.
And that’s not the only part of her identity she’s sure of. Young is also a proud New Yorker, crediting the city with making her a global citizen. “I grew up with a lot of Jewish kids. I grew up with a lot of Puerto Rican kids. I grew up with a lot of Dominican kids. My father worked in the restaurant industry, so a lot of his friends were Indian or Thai. My mom works in the healthcare industry. She was a physical therapist for 20 years at Harlem Hospital, and a lot of her colleagues were Filipina,” Young shares. “I feel so connected to these cultures at all times. So, when I’m asked the question about identity, I feel conflicted. But at the same time, I feel like I’m really a part of the world as a New Yorker.”
Young’s global perspective informs her goals as an actress. “I hope at the end of the day that people really see each other as human beings — looking at people in the eyes and really accepting them,” she says regarding her “I’m a Virgo” character. “We all have a beating heart and we’re all living this life on this earth and we all deserve the basic human rights to live . . . [Let us] see each other in our light.”
And not to spoil too much, but that’s basically the takeaway from the show, where Young plays Jones, a community organizer who may just have a superpower of her own. She’s a transformative public speaker, the type of orator who transports her audience into her mindscape, making them see her ideas as she explains them.
“Jones is really trying to inform the people that they have more power than what they’ve been told,” says Young. “She’s intellectually powerful, but there’s this selfless part of the power. She belongs to everyone.” Over the course of the show, we see Jones organize rallies and protests, explaining the ways capitalism is hurting her community of Oakland and the ways it particularly demonizes Black communities like hers.
