Beloved actress and reality star Garcelle Beauvais has been on a book tour promoting her memoir Love Me as I Am. In the book, she opens up about her childhood in Haiti, her career in Hollywood, and being a mother. The 55-year-old actress began her career in entertainment as many do. She was a model and from there appeared in the Eddie Murphy classic film Coming to America. But it was her role as Francesca or “Fancy” as Jamie Foxx affectionately called her on The Jamie Foxx Show that was her claim to fame.
Throughout her career, Garcelle has worked with the greats and even dated a few of them. During her interview with USA Today, the former talk show host recalled her date with one of the greatest ballplayers of all time, Michael Jordan, which she also talked about in her book. “I had gotten hired (for a modeling job at ESSENCE magazine) and I'm at the fitting and they said, ‘Tomorrow you're going to be working with Michael Jordan,’” she recalled. “Now the way they said it, it sounded like I should be impressed, but I didn't know who he was. And I didn't want to go 'Who's Michael Jordan?' and feel like an idiot. So I go, 'Oh, great.' We didn't have Google.”
“I show up for the shoot and here's this tall chocolate man who had the nicest smile, who couldn't have been nicer and cooler and everybody was buzzing around him, but he was so genuine.”
She added, “I believe we went to dinner afterward. And then he was just such a gentleman, I didn't even realize he was so big until I was talking to my family and I said something, and my brother was there in the background like, ‘You worked with Michael Jordan?’ I had no idea. But to this day, if I ever run into him, we're always happy to see each other.”
She gave more details about the photoshoot and the relationship with MJ that followed in her book. Things seemed to go swimmingly with the Chicago Bulls great because he ended up inviting her on a romantic vacation. However, Garcelle declined the offer because they were still getting to know each other.
“Like a naive little girl, I was ‘clutching my pearls’ and shocked by the idea of going to Hawaii with a man I had just met,” she wrote. “I blew that one!”
Currently, Garcelle is single and happy. She spoke about the pressures on women to find a man in an interview with PEOPLE. “I have such a full life," she said. “I don't want to just bring anybody in as a seat filler. I really want it to be the person. I feel like we put so much pressure on women to have a man, be married, have kids. Can we just live our lives?”
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Featured image by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for The Hollywood Reporter