Netflix’s latest new film is the action-packed End of the Road, starring Queen Latifah, Ludacris, and Mychala Lee. Mychala plays Kelly, Queen Latifah’s daughter, who gets caught up in the fight for her life when a cross-country road trip takes a dark turn. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Mychala about her latest project.
“I was really drawn to my character Kelly because she is all of the things that I was lacking at that time. She’s bold. She’s outspoken. She is fierce. She’s brave. I was really able to tap into those parts of myself through her evolution in the movie,” Mychala said.
Queen Latifah plays Mychala’s onscreen mom, and Mychala had so much praise for the Hollywood icon. “She’s amazing. I cannot express how warm and inviting her energy is,” Mychala noted. “She was so welcoming. No ego at all. She’s so humble and so kind and just being able to kind of have her as a mentor and a friend and a motherly figure was really, really special.”
The 19-year-old revealed that the “main thing” she learned from Queen Latifah was that “kindness will take you further than anything else. Someone of that status and that repertoire, she could easily just go about her job, get in and out, and not worry about anything. But she really took her time to make everyone feel loved, feel welcome, feel safe, especially as an executive producer on the film. She had that extra level of control to make sure that it was a fun, welcoming environment. I think that was my biggest takeaway, to just be kind to everyone that you’re with.”
Ludacris also joins the road trip as Queen Latifah’s brother. Mychala admitted that the Fast & Furious star was the source of many laughs on set. “There are so many unwritten jokes that he threw in the movie that you’ll probably crack up. He’s so much fun,” Mychala said. “He literally felt like an older brother or like that goofy uncle. We have so many inside jokes from set. Honestly, it was a family from the moment we met.”
She added, “We were constantly playing music, constantly dancing and singing. It’s actually funny because Cris and Latifah were very impressed by my music knowledge of 2000s R&B.”
The Netflix movie was filmed in and around Sante Fee and Albuquerque. “It was intense. We were in the New Mexico heat. Sandstorms, thunderstorms, flooding, we experienced it all,” the actress revealed. “It was definitely a grueling summer physically just dealing with the heat and the elements and stuff.”
Over the course of the film, Mychala noted that her character is “definitely given a reality check. She is dealing with teenager problems, splitting with her boyfriend, and leaving all of her friends at home. And then all of a sudden, she is thrown into this real world, high stakes, chaotic issue. She is really given a perspective of what’s important and what she needs to value.”
Mychala will also be returning for the upcoming third season of Truth Be Told. “It is another crazy wild ride in season 3,” Mychala teased. “She was introduced last season as Trini Killebrew, but this season, she plays a big driving force in the narrative of the story. It deals with some really relevant events that are relevant to this day and age. It’s an important story, but it’s also extremely shocking and exciting.”
On top of acting, Mychala is also dedicated to her education. She graduated from Cal State University, Northridge, with a degree in family studies. “My plan is to hopefully maybe one day get my master’s in child psychology because that’s definitely a huge passion of mine and a big need I feel like in my community as a Black woman and also just in our day and age right now,” Mychala told HollywoodLife. “Children, especially going through this pandemic, not being in school, there’s a lot of struggles and new issues that are coming up. It’s something that I’m really passionate about, and I’m so glad that I went and I finished. It also correlates with acting a lot more than I thought it would. I studied a lot of psychology, a lot of family relations, how people function in relationships, so when I get a character, I can kind of see from it a psychological point as well.” End of the Road is now streaming on Netflix.