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At 16 years old, most of us are either too busy caught up in the woes of teen angst to care about anything else, worrying about a Chemistry exam during fourth period the following day that no one studied for or simply navigating through one of the most formidable years of your life.
For burgeoning actor Jalyn Hall, his sixteenth year was spent making his rounds through the 2023 awards season, where he won for “Outstanding Breakthrough Performance in a Motion Picture” at the NAACP Image Awards for his groundbreaking titular role in the 2022 biographical film Till. Now at the ripe old age of 17, he’ll be going for the gold yet again during ths year’s ceremony in the category of “Outstanding Performance by a Youth (Series, Special, Television Movie or Limited-series),” where he’s nominated for his work on the new Disney+ series The Crossover that debuted last April.
In short, the kid who many first discovered on The CW’s hit series All American is growing and going in a direction that will surely leave him smiling from ear-to-ear.
That smile will come in good handy too, especially being that he’s the latest brand ambassador for Invisalign.
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We got the opportunity to have a brief conversation with the teen sensation on why it pays to invest in your oral health, whether for hygienic purposes or simply having a million-dollar smile from the red carpet to role call. We also got a chance to chop it up about his recent role playing a young Martin Luther King Jr. in the docuseries Genius: MLK X presented by National Geographic and Disney+. In addition to portraying one of the most prominent figures in Black culture during his adolescence, there’s also the touchy subject of MLK Jr.’s failed suicide attempt as a pre-teen following the death of his grandmother. Hall’s performance in the role, which we got a preview of during an early screening at the 2023 Urbanworld Film Festival back in November, shows a level of maturity that puts him in a field way beyond his years.
So you see, Jalyn Hall has more than a few things to smile about at the moment. Good thing his pearly whites are ready for a close-up!
Watch our exclusive interview with actor Jalyn Hall above as we discuss Invisalign, playing Martin Luther King Jr. and how he handled portraying the subject of suicide and self-harm amongst teens in a respectable way: