On the Wednesday, May 3 edition of “Tamron Hall,” Dulé Hill celebrated his birthday with the TamFam, appearing alongside his wife Jazmyn Simon to discuss their new children’s book, “Repeat After Me.” The couple reminisced about meeting one another on the set of the hit series “Ballers,” and explained why they chose to remain just friends for over a year following that encounter. Dulé and Jazmyn also spoke about the importance of filling children up with unconditional love and reinforcing the idea that they can achieve anything. See the cute video clip inside…
Jazmyn Simon on meeting Dulé for the first time on the set of “Ballers”:
“This is serendipitous. I was shooting – this [was] my first TV show, and I was supposed to be there for two days, I was going to shoot and fly home – and my time came and went and they said you’re going to shoot in two weeks, sorry, we couldn’t fit you in today. And I was like two weeks, oh my gosh. So this is one week later I called production and I said ‘I am so bored. I’m sitting in my room. Can you guys pick me up for lunch?’ And they said ‘Yeah, we’ll come pick you up,’ and I went to work and I walked in the lunch trailer and Dulé was there with Omar Benson Miller, who played my husband on ‘Ballers.’ And I was like, ‘Can I sit with you guys?’ And he [Dulé] said, ‘Oh, I know who you are, you’re friends with Saladin Patterson.’ And I said ‘Yeah,’ and he’s like, ‘let me take a picture and he took the picture and sent it to Saladin.” Dulé chimed in to quote Saladin, who responded to the photo saying, ‘She’s a good lady, stay away from her.’”
Jazmyn on why she was hesitant to jump into a relationship with any of her “Ballers” co-stars, including Dulé:
“I had got ‘Ballers’ fair and square. I auditioned, I worked my butt off. It was my 200th audition in LA and I booked it and I said ‘I will not date anybody on this show.’ It was a bunch of wonderful actors, they were all male. And I said ‘I got this job. I don’t want anybody to think I got the job any other way than auditioning, so I will not date any of you. You are all my brothers.’” To which Dulé responded, “I am not your brother.” Jazmyn continued, “And then it took a year and a half. We were strictly friends. We were best friends, we didn’t hold hands, we did not hug, we did not kiss, we did not. We were best friends for one and a half years.”
Dulé on the chance encounter that brought them together:
“You know, you never really know how moments of life intersect because really I only had one day to come down and film my part of ‘Ballers.’ I was doing ‘After Midnight’ on Broadway here in New York. So I flew down, worked this one day and was flying back up. By chance, Jazmyn’s stuff got pushed. By chance, she was tired of being in her room. By chance, they said come and have lunch. And by chance, I was sitting with Omar Benson Miller, who we both knew. And then who knew in that moment when we took the picture, all of this was going to be coming afterwards. And this is the greatest gift I could ask for.”
Jazmyn on the importance of the positive affirmations parents and their children can learn from their children’s book, “Repeat After Me”:
“I think that it was important for us to write this book because our children are hurting right now. Right now, Moses doesn’t know a single negative thing about himself. He knows that he is loved. He knows that his mother and father love him, that he is supported. But one day, unfortunately because of the world that we live in, he will come up against something, a negative word. We all remember a time when we believed that we can be anything, that we were the greatest thing, and then we heard something and we held on to that negativity. What we’re trying to do with this book is combat that. Fill him up with all of those things, so when somebody says something negative to him, it rolls off his back like water on a duck.”
