Tracee Ellis Ross almost passed on ‘Black-ish’ because of Anthony Anderson, thought he was an ‘a**hole’

Tracee Ellis Ross starring on Black-ish almost didn’t happen.

The Emmy-nominated actress admitted on The Hollywood Reporter‘s “Awards Chatter” podcast that she almost passed on the show because she didn’t like Anthony Anderson.

“I did not like Anthony,” she said. “I had worked with him in the past. I thought he was an a**hole. If you know Anthony, he has a gruff exterior, and he does not have an inner-governor, and Anthony says stuff that is not that appropriate all the time. Like, everybody knows it’s part of why he’s funny, it’s part of the ace in his deck, but it’s also, like, ‘Oh, my God.’ And if you don’t know him, it can come across rudely.”

She added that she had met him in the past, and those experiences only confirmed to her in her mind that she would not get along with him.

“He said some things to me in the past that I did not like, and I didn’t like him,” she recalled. “But I knew Kenya [Barris] and I knew all the other people involved, and I was like, ‘I will go in.'”

But once they started working together, their dynamic turned around entirely.

“From the moment I walked in to that audition, I was like, ‘Oh, there’s magic here. Like, magic,'” she said. “I will tell you, I was wrong — or not that ‘I was wrong,’ but I have a different experience of him now. He is one of my absolutely favorite people. I love working with that man so much.”