Quinta Brunson, The Bright Light
essence.comQuinta Brunson, they seem to be spot on.Brunson, whose first name is the Spanish word for fifth, is the youngest of her parents’ five children.
Born eight years after her closest brother and 20 years after her eldest, she was the child instructed to “do the dance” for the amusement of her household.“They kind of looked at me for entertainment,” the 2022 ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood honoree says of her childhood family dynamic. “They peddled me around the house and around their friends and had me do little dances and little impersonations.”Thankfully, Brunson didn’t mind the attention.
Instead, she felt performing was a way to bridge the gap between herself and her older family members. But the West Philadelphia native, who initially made a name for herself through viral videos and Internet memes, makes it clear that she was never a clown—in class or at home.
On the contrary, the former producer for BuzzFeed Video and BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, whose mother was a schoolteacher, approached “funny” like a student.“I was always more of a person drawn toward humor.
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