Indya Moore on What It Means to “Make It” in Hollywood
Bazaar’s 2022 Icons issue celebrates a rising generation of stars—people 30 years old or younger—who are making an impact on the world through their ideas and their art. Here, we talk to model and Pose star Indya Moore about leaving a legacy and what it means to “make it.”
“Grace Jones is a timeless icon to me. She is someone who ushered in gender-nonconforming visibility during a time when that was not considered beautiful. I don’t know her, but I just love her.
The best piece of advice that I’ve ever received was probably from my grandfather: ‘Think before you speak.’ Because while we grow and our perspectives evolve, what we say sticks where it lands. I think he was trying to help me protect myself from people defining me based on one moment or one sentence—which is exactly what we do nowadays on Twitter. But we have to let people evolve and shift their ideas, their behavior.
I did an independent film called Saturday Church by Damon Cardasis, starring me and Luka Kain and MJ Rodriguez and Alexia Garcia. It was my first movie, and when I went to the Tribeca Film Festival after we finished filming it, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I made it.’ And I definitely thought the Illuminati was going to force me to sign up! I thought that’s what happens to people when they get famous—that the Illuminati is like, ‘Oh, you have to be one of us now because you’re famous.’
Now, I define what it means to have ‘made it’ very differently. I feel like the day that I learn to grow my own food and my own medicine will be the day that I’ve made it. I don’t know if I really care to have a legacy, to be honest. I want the moment where we actually care about earth and all forms of life on it, which requires us to grow in our ability to be harmonious to each other, to be my legacy. But that’s everybody’s legacy. My name doesn’t have to be on it. I just want to be able to contribute to it.”
Read more from Bazaar’s 2022 Icons issue.
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