Jazlyn Martin has been on a mission to free herself from the shackles of perfection and identity and it’s safe to say she’s succeeded. The Afro-Latina singer-songwriter is best known for roles on This Is Us, All American: Homecoming, and most notably, her role as Jackie on Bel-Air.
Having to find balance between being both a singer and actress has been admittedly “different” for the 26-year-old, but it’s a line she thoroughly enjoys toeing. “I feel like as an actress, I get the privilege to put on other people and live in their shoes and really expand my empathy in that way,” Jazlyn explained. “Whereas music, it’s kind of my time to share my story and my perspective. And that’s usually scarier, because it’s like, ‘Wow, my voice is being heard; not just words in a face, but it’s laying my heart on the line.’”
She’s broken through her varying identity crises by way of her music— hence why her debut EP is aptly titled Identity Crisis. Funny enough, she jokingly brought said dilemma into her V Sessions shoot. Jazlyn altered her voice into a British accent unprovoked during the early moments of our conversation following performances of her song, “Perfect,” and a cover of Summer Walker’s “Session 32.”
In reality, she wasn’t perfect and didn’t hide behind things like foreign accents as a means to solve the problems associated with figuring out who she was and wanted to be. Instead, she turned to God. “You can’t fake it with God,” Jazlyn expressed. “He reveals the things you need to work on, the things that are ugly and he has a beautiful way of making them art. I think I have a struggle with being vulnerable and the things you most want to hide are the things most people want to see. I had to realize that. So the conversations were tough, but needed.”
Despite her conversations with God, the greatest challenge she faced in figuring out her identity was having the world do it for her.
“I let the world tell me who I was instead of me having a chance to figure it out,” Jazlyn explained. “I feel like specifically me being mixed, that was really a hard thing to navigate if I felt belonging in both communities. think the challenge is the duality that we can be both things. We can be good and bad, because that’s what humans is. So that’s probably one of the biggest challenges, being both and being at peace with it.”
For more from Jazlyn including why her “pursuit of perfection” was never a compliment and how she made her portrayal of Jackie as her own, watch her full V Sessions sit-down above.
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