The radical honesty of Gabrielle Union

Union is deep into the publicity junket for her latest movie, the rom-com “The Perfect Find” on Netflix, and playing the part of Gabrielle Union is part of the job. Yet it’s that role the 50-year-old actress is arguably best known for. The character description would be: grown woman who is equal parts guru and homegirl.

Follow Union on Instagram, watch her many, many movies, read her two best-selling memoirs, sit across from her for an hour, and one thing becomes clear — yes, Gabrielle Union is for real. The radical honesty that has been her calling card since laying herself bare in a 2013 viral speech at Essence magazine’s annual Black Women in Hollywood luncheon isn’t an act.

“As much as it feels like evading the truth is the solution, it rarely is. And I had found that over and over and over again. At a certain point, I kept running into the brick wall,” Union said.

“Welcome to my fake hotel room,” announced the star, unable to let even that innocent little public relations fiction slide, before sinking into what was meant to be a conversation about the breadth of her three decades in the acting business, but in the end was more of a free therapy session. Because the ups and downs of Union’s professional life double as a map of how she finally got to peace. Oh, and Africa.

But first, the career section of the journey.

For the past few weeks, Union has been hitting red carpets for “The Perfect Find,” based on author Tia Williams’s 2016 romance novel. The love story centers on Jenna Jones, a 40-something magazine editor who’s trying to get back on track after personal and professional blowups. Along the way, Jenna falls for a much younger man, and the ensuing complications rip up her previous definition of success.

The movie celebrates new beginnings and, of course, love. It also prompts an unavoidable sound-bite question for Union, its star and producer: Who is your perfect find?

“Obviously, the correct answer is my husband,” said Union of her spouse of almost 10 years, former Miami Heat player Dwyane Wade, who is nine years younger. “But I couldn’t have gotten to that without thinking I am finally my own perfect find. I had to find that through extreme, extreme darkness. And it’s been recent.”

This is where things get bad before they get good.

After wrapping “The Perfect Find” two years ago, Union jumped feet-first into a much different project as both executive producer and actor in “The Inspection.” That film follows Ellis, a 25-year-old Black gay man who joins the Marines to both rebel and redefine himself. Union plays Ellis’s estranged mother, Inez, who kicked him out at 16 for being gay.

To find a way into Inez, Union, who is an outspoken LGBTQIA ally and fierce mama bear to a trans teen, had to dig into uncomfortable emotional territory.

“I had to humanize her. And the thing that we had in common was that we made a commitment to full assimilation, to the American Dream that says you can educate your way out of your circumstances and that you can, you know, class your way out of racism. But the math has never mathed,” said Union. “She was full of rage, and she couldn’t direct it at the institution because she had dug in, so she directed it at her child because she got sold a bill of goods.”

Union knew that kind of anger. It had been brewing in her for years as she raged against all the machines — Hollywood, rape culture, racism, the patriarchy, everything. Playing Inez was a lightbulb. “Oh, you found the wound. Welcome,” said Union. “And then it started to fester and grow like a f---ing cancer.”

Because there was nowhere to put all the stuff Inez had dredged up. Sure, there were standing ovations, accolades, nominations for Union and the film. But no pause button. Right after “The Inspection” finished principal photography, the actress began shooting Season 3 of the Apple TV Plus true-crime series “Truth Be Told.”

Union plays a high school principal working with a true-crime podcaster (Octavia Spencer) to shed light on the disappearance and sexual trafficking of Black and brown girls in the Bay Area. The violence and brutality depicted on the show sent Union right back to when she was raped at 19.

“And every day some part of a scene, something would trigger a memory that I didn’t know I experienced,” said the actress, who left set to head straight home to her husband. “I am not a crier. That’s not my ministry. And I’m a heap every day.” The series shot for five months.

As if the subject matter itself wasn’t enough, the physical location of Union’s final scene really drove the point home. In the end, Union’s character is shot and killed at the Alameda County Superior Courthouse in Oakland. Decades before, Union was at that same courthouse testifying against her rapist.

“As my character passes away, I felt like I was dying,” she said.

Just hearing the story retold feels like too much, right? Imagine living it. For Union, it was a year and a half of too much. Going from one role to another in which she felt sliced open without a plan to stitch herself back up. “It wasn’t a character I had a problem leaving. It was me. The parts of me that I didn’t know existed,” she said.

Union had no clue what the next step was. “It ate up all the space. I stayed in a place of ‘I wish someone would …’” said Union of her rage and how she remained poised for a fight. “And I was ready, and I stayed ready. It felt like acidic venom just taking over my whole body.”

She was about to turn 50 and couldn’t take the pain and anger into the next stage of her life. So she started asking questions of people who looked the way she does now. People who were peaceful, who seemed like they had it all figured out. The prescription was consistent: therapy and being honest with your therapist. That led her to some come-to-Gabrielle moments about dissociation, trauma bonds, shifting your expectations — and Africa.

In the doc, there’s a scene at the Assin Manso Slave River Site in Ghana when the whole family is washed clean. Rarely at a loss for words, Union said she doesn’t have the best ones to describe what happened there. The site is called “the last bath” because it was one of the last places on African soil touched by men and women bound for slavery in the Americas. Union sat near the river’s edge with her hands and feet submerged and cried, releasing her ancestors from guilt and giving herself the same grace.

“This is my superhero origin story right here,” she said. “Whoever came out of that river is on a different path.”

This is why she shares so much. The actress is clear on the fact that she isn’t a guru, but man does she have a story to tell about getting to the other side of pretty much anything — trauma, co-dependence, self-sabotage.

“And for me, not sharing it isn’t an option for my soul,” said Union. And despite evidence to the contrary, what she puts out there is only a “small percentage” of what she’s actually going through. The rest she’s still trying to figure out. “I only speak on what I’m comfortable speaking on, but I’m so much more comfortable with the truth. The truth just is, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Really? Since when?

Okay fine, she admits that lying feels safer. We lie to make ourselves feel better about our decisions. We lie to others to cover up our own bad behavior. We lie, we lie, we lie. But the bubble the lies create is unsustainable, said Union. And when it pops, everyone’s upset.

“Even that moment of ‘How do I look?’ If the truth is amazing, that’s easy. But if there’s like a booger, there’s that moment where you think, I should probably give them the truth, but it feels cruel. So a lie is better. Then cut to, they go out with a booger and on social media they’re now the booger person. I have to be the booger-pointer-outer in my own life because, please, Jesus, tell me. You are not doing me any favors lying to me. I need the truth, whatever that is,” said Union.

“I can control how I respond. But if I don’t actually have the information, now it’s set up, now it’s sabotage. I can’t function that way. I can’t have peace like that,” said Union.

And what Union wants more than anything right now is peace. This is her soft life era. Although she didn’t call it that. She isn’t set off by every little thing. (The great internet debate over how she splits her bills with her husband? Union remains unbothered by it.) Fear of how truth might expose you isn’t her concern anymore.

“But opening myself up to what? People’s opinions? That’s just their response,” said Union.

“Usually reactions are less about me and more about some other part of somebody else’s life. And that’s not really my business, right? And if having strong opinions about my life brings you some modicum of peace, by all means, I don’t care. I want you to be happy and whole and peaceful. Because it don’t change mine.”