La Vie En Ross

Bold, funny, and unequivocally glamorous TR ACEE ELLIS ROSS is hitting her stride

- Rob Haskell

The sky is turning dusky over the Soho House in West Hollywood, and Tracee Ellis Ross, nestled into a sofa on the roof garden, gazes out at the downtown skyline and then in toward a beefy blond man she calls “the best of the lumberjacky thing,” insisting that he is not her type and then insisting that she has no type. The violet hour is Ross’s favorite time of day—to pour herself a glass of wine, to take a bath, and to do the “wandering and pondering” that her increasingly busy schedule has turned into a luxury. Her alarm went off at 4 this morning, as usual; Ross is in the midst of shooting a fifth season of Black-ish (premiering on ABC this month), and meanwhile projects are piling up at her feet, which on most days are steeply stilettoed but today are clad in winking orthopedic Gucci trainers. Ross has been a working actress for two decades, her career bubbling away gently for much of that time, but all of a sudden she is that rarest of Hollywood birds, ascendant after 40.

“In the last few years, things I thought were off the table happened,” says Ross, wearing a long chartreuse dress swirling with flowers. Her attention is suddenly diverted by the arrival of a plate of cheese—an unaccustomed indulgence, at the taste of which her eyes close and her face tilts upward in a sort of caricature of rapture.