Meet My Imaginary Friend

Actor Jay Ellis takes us back to his childhood – moving all around the country, going on adventures with his imaginary friend, and dreaming of being an FBI agent/karate master/football champion one day. He tells the story of one of his first interactions with the police, when, after toilet-papering a classmate’s house with best friend Joe, the pair are detained and berated by cops for more than 30 minutes, “as if we had just robbed a store.” Jay says the experience forever changed his relationship with law enforcement. “I didn't get to have those teenage years in the same way that some of my non-Black peers and friends got to have. I was looked at as a man and thought to be dangerous, even though I was a boy.” 

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Interested in learning more about Jay? Check out the links below: 

• Listen to Jay’s Lemonada Media podcast The Untold Story: Policing: http://smarturl.it/untoldstory 
• Watch Jay as Lawrence on HBO’s Insecure: https://www.hbo.com/insecure 
• Catch Jay in the long-awaited Top Gun sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, out this summer: https://www.topgunmovie.com/ 

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