Lauren London Talks Getting Back To Work During The Toughest Year of Her Life

Lauren London will return to the big screen this Friday in Without Remorse, a Michael B. Jordan-led action thriller.

Unlike a number of recent films that were shot under COVID constraints, the production of this film, which is based on the 1993 Tom Clancy novel of the same name, took place in 2019 during what London described as “by far the toughest year of my life so far.”

Nipsey Hussle, London’s lifelong partner and father of her youngest son, was murdered on March 31, 2019.

“Getting back to work was more than just being anxious because I wasn’t working,” London tells ESSENCE. “It was really a stand on, will I work again? Do I want to work? Who am I now? Is this where I still belong? Do I still hold space here? Should I?”

London had previously appeared in the 2018 Lifetime film Poinsettias for Christmas, which she starred in before Without Remorse. Games People Play, the BET series in which she starred, premiered less than a month after Nipsey’s death.

London says of returning to acting after a brief hiatus between those ventures and her most recent film, “It was like a leap of faith and just moving with the fear — I don’t know if I should; if I can. Will I be accepted in that way again because it’d been a while? I will say that God is so gracious because it was the best way I could go back to work.”

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