The son of legendary, Emmy Award-winning Jamaican American actress Sheryl Lee Ralph, made information for his handsomeness after his mom shared a photograph of him on social media. Her publish blew up, with hundreds of girls responding with quite a lot of suggestive feedback, and information shops sharing the story.
Regardless of the frivolous fanfare, Ralph’s son, whose title is Etienne Maurice, is something however shallow.
Maurice was born in Los Angeles to Ralph and her then husband, Eric Maurice, who’s Afro-European, hailing from the Ivory Coast. Etienne Maurice is 31-years-old and nonetheless lives in Los Angeles, the place he’s an entrepreneur, nonprofit founder, filmmaker, actor, activist, and yoga teacher.
Devoted to utilizing his inventive passions for social change, Maurice says his mission is to construct his neighborhood within the digital and bodily house by movie, well being, and wellness. He fashioned his nonprofit, WalkGood LA – one among LA’s largest wellness organizations – in 2020, after being outraged by the injustices towards Black and Brown individuals.
“When Ahmaud Arbery was killed, I used to be actually annoyed and anxious,” Maurice informed the LA Sentinel in a 2022 interview. “He was working in his personal neighborhood, he regarded like me, he was doing issues that I’d do in my neighborhood and was murdered in the course of the road. I used to be questioning why nobody on the market was coming collectively. We have been in limbo attempting to determine if we should always protest or keep residence. Then after George Floyd [was killed] I made a decision I needed to do one thing. So I’d attend different individuals’s protests and I felt one thing, however I additionally believed I may do it myself, I may carry individuals collectively.” These experiences, Maurice revealed, spawned the beginning of WalkGood LA.
Together with social activism and artwork initiatives, WalkGood LA additionally hosts wellness actions reminiscent of runs, hikes, therapeutic circles and yoga periods, some led by Maurice himself. Many of those periods see upwards of 200 individuals in attendance.
Maurice’s for-profit enterprise, WalkGood Productions is an impartial movie and tv manufacturing firm that creates tales that encourage, inform, and entertain.
“At WalkGood, we pleasure ourselves on constructing communities by storytelling, telling native tales on the world stage, and rising collectively as filmmakers each step of the best way. Our title stems from an previous Jamaican proverb for integrity, character, and luck,” the corporate’s bio explains. This previous weekend, WalkGood Productions wrapped the newest version of FilmGood, its quarterly movie and wellness pageant for underrepresented filmmakers.
By these tasks Maurice companions together with his sister, Ivy-Victoria Maurice, and cousin, Marley Ralph, to assist carry therapeutic to the neighborhood. His ardour for these causes are fueled by his personal ache and trauma, he says. He’s open about experiencing a psychological well being disaster, struggling a traumatic mind damage, and surviving gun violence – in hopes of connecting together with his neighborhood and serving to individuals discover liberation inside their ache.
“That’s what it’s about, having the ability to flip your ache into function. It does nobody any good once you sit in that ache and wallow in anger and frustration. Take into consideration how one can be a blessing to somebody and the way you’re in a position to present gratitude for being alive,” Maurice informed the LA Sentinel.
The social media buzz round Maurice’s attractiveness has already introduced elevated consideration to his group and causes, together with his neighborhood rising dramatically inside hours.