Teyana Taylor Reacts to Earning First Grammy and Golden Globe Nominations: 'One Answered Prayer After Another' (Exclusive) Ilana KaplanDecember 29, 2025 at 9:30 PM 0 Courtesy of Def Jam Teyana Taylor Teyana Taylor tells PEOPLE about her reaction to earning Grammy and Golden Globe nominations "All I ever wanted was to feel appreciated, and I wanted to feel utilized," says the actress and singer Taylor released her album Escape Room and starred in One Battle After Another in 2025 2025 was the year of Teyana Taylor.
- - Teyana Taylor Reacts to Earning First Grammy and Golden Globe Nominations: 'One Answered Prayer After Another' (Exclusive)
Ilana KaplanDecember 29, 2025 at 9:30 PM
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Courtesy of Def Jam
Teyana Taylor -
Teyana Taylor tells PEOPLE about her reaction to earning Grammy and Golden Globe nominations
"All I ever wanted was to feel appreciated, and I wanted to feel utilized," says the actress and singer
Taylor released her album Escape Room and starred in One Battle After Another in 2025
2025 was the year of Teyana Taylor.
Since she landed her first record deal at 15 years old, the New York City-born multihyphenate had been hard at work pursuing her dreams in the entertainment industry.
But by 2020, after the release of her third studio LP The Album, Taylor announced her retirement from music, saying she felt "super under-appreciated as an artist." Instead, she focused on building her acting resume, starring in the comedy sequel Coming 2 America (2021) and the powerful drama A Thousand and One (2023).
Edwig Henson
Teyana Taylor
But Taylor, now 35, found music calling to her again with the release of Escape Room in August, a powerful 22-track visual album. In the time since she had retired, Taylor had gone through a divorce with Iman Shumpert, to whom she was married for seven years and shares two daughters Junie and Rue Rose, and subsequently found a creative resurgence.
"I think what lured me back was just me coming back on my terms," she tells PEOPLE over the phone. "All I ever wanted was to feel appreciated, and I wanted to feel utilized. I didn't want to be stuck or put into one box."
Once she "proved" herself to whoever doubted her, she felt ready to not only make music, but fall in love with it again.
"I love to create and direct, so being able to come back to music in such a vulnerable way was very healing for me," she says. "It was a lot of different things blocking my journey or what was written for me."
With Escape Room, Taylor's arc was a cinematic R&B portrait of a woman finding solace after operating in survival mode. Through heartbreaking ballads and slow grooves, she chronicles a rebirth following the triumphs she's endured, including postnatal depression and divorce (which she ultimately doesn't name on the record).
"Your art is your art, and once you're willing to be vulnerable and raw, of course you're going to be nervous with anything that you do because this is still what's coming from your heart through good, bad and different," she says.
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Teyana Taylor in Sacramento, Calif. in August 2023
But Taylor points out that her music should not be taken as situations that "happened verbatim." She just wants to make others feel understood.
"I just want to show people that I'm here, and I get it," she says. "I think we all want to be seen, and we want to be heard, and we want to be felt. I'm so happy that this album was able to be that for people."
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Teyana Taylor in Atlanta in April 2008
To help her distill her emotions on the record, Taylor tapped a star-studded cast of women to deliver monologues, including her All's Fair costars Sarah Paulson, Niecy Nash-Betts, Kerry Washington, Jodie Turner-Smith, Taraji P. Henson, La La Anthony and more.
"These are women that I love and adore, and women who have shown up for me in my time of grief," says Taylor. She felt like she was meant to cross paths with these women. "When life was life-ing for me, [these] women have been there and have been a voice for me," she says.
Escape Room has notably earned Taylor her first Grammy nomination for Best R&B Album. "Everything is happening, everything I ever dreamed of. [It's] one answered prayer after another," says Taylor. It may have seemed like a long time coming, but Taylor is the self-proclaimed "epitome of patience."
Still, the experience has been nothing short of a whirlwind for her. "You have all these different thoughts and emotions that go through your head where it's just like, 'Oh, my God, this is so amazing.' Of course, you feel like every project deserved that recognition. What made this one more worthy than the other one?" she says rhetorically.
But for Taylor, this Grammy nomination is for every project she's done — for VII, K.T.S.E., The Album and Escape Room. "This acknowledgment for me is for every album that I put out that I felt like was underrated or not seen," she says, noting with a sense of ease that she will never question the timing. "That wait is not punishment. — it's preparation for what's already written for you."
Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Teyana Taylor in 'One Battle After Another' in 2025
Taylor has also been riding the high of her standout performance in Paul Thomas Anderson's 2025 political dramedy One Battle After Another, as the complex Black woman and revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills.
"Our girl is complicated," Taylor says of Perfidia. "I needed to make sure I identified her many layers and then color-coordinated those layers, because as you can see, Perfidia can tap into different layers at different times."
For Taylor, the way Perfidia wields her sexuality and finds herself objectified in the process was a "harsh reality" she believes viewers needed to see.
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"Yes, it was an uncomfortable thing maybe for women to watch, especially Black women. But these also were the stories that we wanted to be told, too. This is what's happening to us in real life, and light needs to be shed on that."
At the same time, Taylor also mined her own experience with postpartum depression for her on-screen alter-ego. Still, she kept in mind how it affects people differently while developing her character.
Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Teyana Taylor in 'One Battle After Another' in 2025
"The way that Perfidia handled [postpartum depression] was the result of feeling unheard, unseen and not beautiful and feeling like a piece of meat," says Taylor. "It resulted [in] her [feeling] like, 'Okay, I need to be selfish and show up for myself, even at the expense of leaving my own child.'"
But Taylor is quick to note that no one should judge how Perfidia acted since her postpartum depression was ignored. "I definitely love that this movie was able to shake the table and create that healthy dialogue," she explains. And it's part of what helped Taylor earn her first Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture.
At the moment, Taylor doesn't want to think too much about winning either a Grammy or Golden Globe. "I get really shy when it comes to these kinds of topics because I'm kind of superstitious," Taylor admits. "I try and focus on things that's coming directly in front of me, and then everything else will come and fall into place."
on People
Source: "AOL Entertainment"
Source: Entertainment
Published: December 29, 2025 at 06:36PM on Source: ANDY MAG
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