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Mic check… thanks for tuning into Woman Crush Wednesday, everyone. This week, we’re celebrating a young star with an already long career in Hollywood. Here’s Logan Browning!
WHO’S THAT GAL: Logan Browning
WHY WE’RE CRUSHING: Browning is the star of Netflix’s comedy-drama series Dear White People, which is returning for its third season this Friday, August 2. The critically-acclaimed show follows Samantha White (Browning) and several other black students at Winchester University, a predominantly white Ivy League institution, as they navigate racial discrimination, social injustices, and other identity issues on their campus. The series tackles modern race relations in the U.S. and uses humor and brutal honesty to highlight the problems that continue to affect our “post-racial” society.
As soon as we saw Browning taking charge of the mic in her own radio show, also called “Dear White People,” we immediately fell for her. From her unwavering sensibility to articulate exactly what she’s thinking to the way she commands a room and leads her peers, both in the Black Student Union and beyond, we knew from the get-go that she was an absolute bad ass. But over the past two seasons of the show, Browning has also beautifully developed Sam’s character and gradually uncovered the complexities and vulnerabilities in her. Browning herself has said that, “…making her [Sam] human helps us relate to the people that we put on pedestals, which is actually something that we talk about in season three.”
Browning has also cultivated Sam’s character to be a strong voice in an industry that continues to have a problem with representation on screen. Browning revealed in an interview with Cosmopolitan that playing this character has also been a “revelation” for her, as she hadn’t much grappled before with her own racial identity (Browning, like Sam in the series, is also biracial). Unfortunately, Browning has some other similarities with her character, most notably that she lost her own father and then had to play Sam losing her father at the end of season two. But Browning recognizes that her portrayal of Sam, including this loss of a parent, has deeply impacted viewers, stating, “A lot of people feel like Sam is their voice and that I as Logan carry that on through my personal platform.” With season three of Dear White People coming soon, we can hardly wait to hear that powerful voice once again.
WHERE YOU’VE SEEN HER BEFORE: Browning, now 30 years old, has been acting since the age of 15 when she appeared as Carrie in Lori Loughlin’s short-lived series, Summerland. She then had a brief role on the popular Nickelodeon sitcom, Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide, followed up by her biggest gig yet playing Sasha in the 2007 movie Bratz. From here, Browning’s career gained even more momentum and she scored a role in Seasons 2-5 of Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns as Brianna Ortiz, the adoptive daughter of Will and Sasha Brown, played by Lamman Rucker and Denise Boutte, respectively.
Following this chapter in her career, Browning starred in numerous other television productions, including the comic book based series Powers, and VH1’s sports drama, Hit the Floor, where she played Jelena Howard, captain of the Devil Girls, the cheerleaders of a professional basketball team. Recently, Browning even acted in the horror-thriller flick The Perfection, alongside Girls’ star Allison Williams. Clearly, Browning has an unusual versatility as a performer with a wide-range of acting experiences in her portfolio, from bubbly teen comedies to psychological thrillers and horror films. If anything, her part as Sam on the first two seasons of Dear White People show that she really has mastered it all.
WHERE YOU’LL SEE HER AGAIN: Dear White People is entering it’s third season, premiering this Friday, August 2, and your girl Browning will once again be center stage, though this time not at the mic, having left her radio station at the end of the last season. While we couldn’t be more excited to see how Sam’s character develops, we’re sure Browning has some simultaneously hilarious, heart wrenching, and awe-inspiring things in store for us.
