Amuse YOUR SENSES

And that's understandable. She just finished back-to-back late nights (wee hours in the morning) of shooting final scenes of the 6th season of BET's The Game, returned home to Los Angeles to spend the holidays with her husband, and this was supposed to be her day off. But we have to talk: About her character and alter ego, the fiery “Tasha Mack-alicious,” frenemies in the sportsworld lifestyle, her commitment to children and the arts, and, of course, about her beauty and hair tips. 

AMBERmag.com: Do you see the women on the show as real friends?
WR:  They all started with “If it don’t make dollars it don’t make sense. Med school is a friend but Tasha will cut off her nose to spite her friend. We’ve seen her do that before. Tasha gets caught in the most precarious situations and she doesn’t have friends to turn to. She can’t tell her son what she’s doing. But in truth Med school is more than a friend, she’s become family and Tasha has allowed her to get close without realizing it. There is a real friendship because Tasha sees a lot of herself in Melanie, but she’s all over the place. In that world, in that football world, it is easy to lose yourself to become what you think you should be. Tasha is a slave to her son and Melanie is a slave to her husband and that’s the connection they have.

AMBERmag.com: It sounds more like frenemies than anything.
WR:  It’s a very selfish industry from what I've observed. Everybody is all for theirs and if you can get on this person’s coattail then so be it. It’s a very cut and dry lifestyle: your man can get traded at any moment and I don’t think the ties are really there from what I’ve observed about portraying these women. At the end of the day you have to stand by your man so can't afford to stand by your girls  because he’s paying for everything. These women are a lot younger than Tasha. But when she was in her '20s, she gave up so much for that lifestyle and she’s going to go through so much throughout the season because she still wants what she wants and we will see how far she will go to get it.

AMBERmag.com: A lot of people were really annoyed at some of the storylines last season, especially with the introduction of guns. What were they thinking?
WR: We picked up five years later and things changed. Malik was not the same guy that you saw five years earlier on the CW. And that lifestyle can drive you to do desperate things. He blew a lot of his money, he was jacked before and his mom was always packing even though he had a security guard, so I don’t see it as too much of a stretch because he is hood, so it didn’t surprise me. But it is interesting to hear how people responded to it. 

AMBERmag.com: Let’s talk beauty. You have great skin, what do you use?
WR:  I am very simple, but I was using Proactive to keep things under control and I love it. My makeup artist turned me on to a great moisturizer by Mario Badescu (Buttermilk Moisturizer, $18, available at MarioBadescu.com).

AMBERmag.com: What about makeup?
WR:  I still use Iman Foundation in Clay and I also use Makeup Forever HD for Red Carpet. For lips I use a little bit of everything. And I will go for color—like red, magenta or violet—when I need some. I’m not afraid of color at all on my lips and you can see me in anything and I definitely love the family of reds. For nails, I just found Minx out here in Atlanta and I got my Minx on. I love it for Tasha, because she’s so ostentatious.

AMBERmag.com: How do you take care of your hair?
WR: I wear wigs on set, but my hair is natural underneath. The good thing about wearing wigs instead of the weaves is I’ve been able to treat my hair and braid it down really nice. I’ve been treating it and conditioning it and taking care of it with a lot of  Kimble Hair care Systems.

AMBERmag.com: How do you feel about the natural hair movement happening today?
WR: I loveit! I was doing the two-strand twist for a while, though I haven’t rocked it on the red carpet. But, yes, I am loving the natural hair phenom going on right now.