THE LIMITLESS LIFE OF LEYNA BLOOM, PART 1

Leyna Bloom appears via a Zoom screen, wearing subtle cat eye eyeglasses and her hair pulled effortlessly into a perky ponytail. A Levi’s^® x Fresco Steez Collection denim jacket, a collaboration in service to Black History Month and emblazoned with the phrase “All Power to The People” is perched atop her shoulders, worn like a true style setter. Even through a 13” laptop screen and meeting by way of a link rather than across a table over coffee, Bloom’s presence is palpable. Her energy and personable nature transcend the technology we are relegated to in these socially distant circumstances.

Upon greeting the actress, whose debut film Port Authority will be released in the US this month, with a simple “how are you doing?” She confidently replies, “I am blessed and highly favored. Today is a new day to do things differently.”

Indeed, it is. And indeed, she is.

A chat with Bloom is chock full of solid phrases like this, that belong on a t-shirt or mug or can just as easily make for an iconic campaign slogan. Though relatively new to the big screen, it’s as if she has been poised to be there for decades, creating stories and entering spaces she claims have not historically included people who look like her.

She is not just entering these spaces, she is conquering and commanding the attention she deserves and continuing to write a new narrative in Hollywood and beyond.

In this two-part series and conversation with writer and author Melissa Magsaysay, Bloom talks firsts, her Filipina and Nigerian roots and staying fearless.

Melissa Magsaysay: A quick Google search of you, the word “first” comes up a lot next to your name. With being the first in so many aspects of your life and in our culture, do you see it as pressure or privilege?

Leyna Bloom: I think it’s a combination of both. I grew up loving a lot of women of color that were the firsts, like Dorothy Dandridge, who was the first to be nominated for an acting award. Tyra Banks who was the first to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated. I’m just following in the footsteps of the ladies that have paved the way for me. You have to just go in and know that there will only be one first and you have to really set that tone and understand that that’s a lot of responsibility. And know that there’s certain things in your life that put you in this position and you have a responsibility to that.

So, every single day I just wake up and I’m looking around and everything is working, and everything is operating, so I’m able to go out in the world and speak up, and represent, and go out in the world and change some things. I was born in the world I didn’t fit in, so I’m creating one that I do.

MM: I love that. And speaking of women of color, how has your ethnicity and background informed your ideals and experiences with beauty?

LB: Well, I’m 50% Filipino. I’m Nigerian from West Africa. I’m also half French and British blood. So, thinking of those things and where I come from and those worlds, I’m often thinking about the beauty in that culture. I’m often thinking about being a Filipina woman coming up in General Santos City, being around such greenery and such livestock. And so much happiness and indigenous people, that don’t need the things that I’m needing in this big metropolitan world to survive. And what do they pull from? From happiness. They pull from family. They pull from harvesting. They pull from dance and music and cultural things, certain beads and certain textiles that allow them to transcend their ideas and their lineage of ideas. And in Africa, we come from rich soils of kings and queens where the ideas of gold and those things don’t really matter. It’s just about just the family, and it’s about the upbringing of a child. And where we can find the intersections of the masculine and feminine in each individual, and how we can celebrate both at the same time. So, I’m constantly evolving through what’s come before me and what I can take into the future.

MM: That’s so beautiful. I love that you were able to really draw and celebrate all those amazing rich aspects from both your Nigerian and your Filipina roots. How much did you lean into your Filipina heritage, growing up?

LB: Well, honestly, I wasn’t raised Filipino, I was raised African. I was raised on the South side of Chicago, so I was raised Black. The cultures of that community inspired me to really understand the other cultures that were inside of me. So, I was constantly looking for puzzle pieces in my life to just give me some
ideas, some type of passion, some type of energy of, “oh this is where I come from in the world.”

My first acting teachers were two Filipina women. One was a lesbian, and one was this woman who taught me certain words of the community to understand where I come from. The first word I wanted to know (in Tagalog) was, how do you say, “I love you?” So, I got it tattooed on my arm “Mahal Kita”.

It is something that’s inside of me that is taking me into places, many spaces Filipino people have not been allowed to go in yet or haven’t been able to access yet. I think when I started to learn about my culture is when I started to see other people and to get to know other people, and try their dishes and hear their laughs. And hear their stories and read books about our rich goddesses and gods that comes from our world. I think it’s just I’m still navigating this space because I know that both of my backgrounds come from a lot of colonization and pre-colonization, I have to really trace back to where we were before that happened. And how we as a community pushed through that and overcame, in huge populations around the world. I think it’s so powerful when I see another Filipina that is out here in spaces, creating change and doing it with their passion and their love for who they are and where they come from in the world.

When we look out into the horizon, we need to see collectives of ideas and experiences and different ways of living. Just like my acting teacher said, “Come on. Oh, you’re Filipino also? Let me teach you. Let me show you some things. Let me show you how I live, so you can go on the road and see different things. So, you can say I didn’t just see black and white. I saw color.” That gave me so much power. So, I’m giving them justice and their dreams are living through me.

MM: Thank you for saying that. I think that we lose sight of that. I think we’re at an inflection point right now, with Asian identity being, in a lot of sad ways, being brought to the forefront. It’s been this sad but also introspective period of really looking inward, discovering and educating on all these amazing things that you just touched upon. How do you feel like people can be good allies to the Asian community right now?

LB: I think it’s imperative that in order to really come together and be a collective, we must individually collect ourselves. I am constantly reminding this new generation to understand who we are, and where we are, and where we come in the world. What things make us individual and how we can heal our family in order to go out and heal the world.

I come from a family that has dealt with a lot of trauma on both sides, so in order for me to heal myself and my family, I must really sit down and say, what makes you Filipina? When you think of Filipina, when you think of Nigerian, what words come to life?

And when you hear those words come out your mouth and you hear the music that’s coming through your ears and floating through your body, you get this ray of sunshine, this energy that is an embodiment of your ancestry, speaking to you. And you go out into the world and you touch another person and you talk to another person. You learn and you have this intersection of connections through each other, and that is how the community comes together. That is how the community lives together and brings together.

Outside of being Filipino or being African, which are two of the most marginalized communities in the world, we understand how much power we have and how much the world doesn’t see that, and how we have to see it in ourselves. We have to come together and congregate together in order to go out in the world and really represent that. We need allies on both sides. Instead of just having allies, we just need to understand that outside of our last names, we are all brothers and sisters, regardless of where we come from around the world. So, I think understanding that and healing yourself is already the antidote to just fight and be a soldier of love. That’s what it is, and when we get more people like that in our collective, and we get more people like that in our community, thinking and breathing and living and dreaming like this, then we are already winning.

MM: To be able to occupy spaces that we aren’t traditionally in, how do you stay fearless? How do you keep occupying that space when you haven’t seen it? Or you haven’t seen yourself reflected there yet?

LB: Obviously when we go into those spaces, we’re already being boxed in into like, “Okay, you’re a woman. Okay, you’re biracial. Okay, what is your race? Okay, I’m Filipino.” So, I think we go into those spaces as just that, because we can’t go into those spaces without that. When we go into those spaces, we have to constantly speak up. We have to constantly make ourselves known. Yes, my first two acting teachers were two Filipinos, one is now trans, and the other was just a powerful woman that said, “Unapologetically, I am a Filipina woman, so my learning and where I come from as an actress is always going to be rooted in the Filipina.” So, she’s teaching me certain things about my culture.

It’s not just being in that space, it’s about commanding the space that you’re in, learning and representing and understanding the power you have in that space. Commanding that space and looking at people in the eye and saying, “I belong here too, just like you. We showed up today and we’re all going to learn from each other.” I think that’s what it’s about, we take turns learning from each other. We take turns telling each other stories and we become human together.