Grant Hall Gets a Second Chance at Experiencing College and Frat Life in ‘Grown-ish’

Freeform’s hit television series Grown-ish, a spinoff of the hit series Black-ish has helped introduce a new generation to Black college life, depicting the ups and downs of fraternities and more. In particular, the experience of Black college life is represented through the journey of Kyle who is played by Grant Hall. While Black-ish became a cultural phenomenon in Black culture before concluding its eight-season run in 2022, Grown-ish is also leaving its own mark in the lane that has been carved out. Hall describes his character on the show as ‘somebody who is very multifaceted'.

“Kyle is kind of a person who's developed their personality through their environment. He's in an elite fraternity at the school and he's surrounded by mainly white people,” Hall said. “I think that affects his mind and his psychology overall in terms of how he acts and how he shows himself off to people. But he has a couple of different sides. He's also a little bit of a player and is seen out with other girls who aren't his girlfriend, and he gets caught for it,” he added. Hall says that despite Kyle being a ‘player,’ he is also charismatic in his own way. Before joining the series, Grant spoke about being familiar with the show through an ex-girlfriend and became a fan through the show’s depiction of how realistic the college experience is.

“I think it's just influencing a lot of people and probably motivating them to go to college and get the experiences of their own,” Hall said. Being a part of the show helped Grant live out his own missed college experiences. He started acting in his late teens and had to forego the typical college experience, so he missed out on the frat and college party life experience. “It's just kind of cathartic for me. It feels like I'm still getting that experience that I never got, which is really nice,” Hall said.

During his acting training, Grant got the chance to practice improv, which came in handy when he got on the set of Grown-ish. In working with Grown-ish co-star Marcus Scribner, Grant shared that in the beginning, he tried to stick to the script when doing scenes with Marcus but after noticing Scribner’s improv on-set, he asked for freedom to do some improv himself.

Grant discussed that it was easy to work with Marcus stating, “It was funny because as the season progresses, our characters start to become very hostile towards one another due to their mutual love interest. But it was hard, because me and Marcus are actually cool in real life, and we're friends. We kind of just clicked right away. It wasn't a friendship that I felt like I had to force because sometimes you're acting with people and it might take a little more work to build chemistry. But with him, it just felt very, very easy,” he said.

While Grant is sticking around on Grown-ish for a bit, he is still finding time to take on independent projects. He is filming an independent film, Trigger, in Detroit. “With Grown-ish, as soon as you step on set you're in a very high-end, big-budget project and you got all the little amenities you could ever want. That's really nice, and you want that, but at the same time, independent projects help to feed more of the artist side of myself because there's really good characters that you get to play with and really good up-and-coming directors [to work with],” Hall said about his continued support for independent film projects. He expressed he would also like to direct his own projects down the road.

As viewers wait for Grant’s upcoming projects, they can watch him on Grown-ish on Wednesdays at 10:30 PM EST on Freeform or catch new episodes streaming on Hulu on Thursdays.

Photo credit: Audrey Sliger