Monique Coleman is the kind of person whose sincerity you can feel before ever having a real conversation with her. She may be a celebrity, but she sends two different heart emojis and a first bump in an email correspondence about interview times, no assistant involved. She joins our Zoom call bare-faced. And she relays her life story like someone who’s never quite been asked for the whole of it. She’s eager to lay out the details, yet careful in choosing her words.
She’s waited for this moment.
By Alexis Jones
Photography By Anna Koblish
Monique Coleman
Is Recasting Herself as the Main Character
Monique Coleman and PARTNER Louis van Amstel perform on “Dancing with the Stars,” 2006; Getty images/Adam Larkey
Monique Coleman at Disney’s “High School Musical 2” World Premiere, 2007; Getty images/Steve Granitz
Monique Coleman and Corbin Bleu AT the 58th Annual Creative Arts Emmy Awards, 2006; Getty images/Mathew Imaging
Monique Coleman and the Cast of “High School Musical” on NBC’s “The Today Show,” 2006; GETTY images/Jemal Countess
Originally from South Carolina, Coleman has been self-sufficient since she left home at 17. “I went to university in Chicago, graduated when I was 21, moved to Los Angeles, and was famous by the time I was 24,” Coleman says. “I have not stopped working, and somewhere in there is a 10-year marriage and four years out of a divorce.” Much has changed in her life in the past two decades, but the Monique Coleman etched into our collective memory is both fictional and frozen in time. Most of us were introduced to her as “High School Musical”’s Taylor McKessie, the bubbly, type A brainiac and best friend to Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens). For young Black girls in the early 2000s, she represented something significant: a smart, stylish, multidimensional Black teen who existed beyond the stereotypes of just a sidekick or “angry Black friend.” Coleman is hyperaware of the weight Taylor carried 20 years ago. Growing up in the late ’80s, Coleman dreamed of being cast as Ashley Banks in “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” or Lisa Turtle in “Saved by the Bell,” two Black girls with full personalities and style whose circumstances weren’t defined by their struggle. “I looked at these girls and thought, ‘God, that’s what I want to be,’” Coleman says. But what happens after you become your biggest aspiration?
Photos: Anna Koblish; Monique wears a Helsa pink Beckette knit cardigan and capri pant via Revolve, vintage Valentino 2002 tortoise shell flower belt via Isle of Monday, Jimmy Choo Scarlett 50 shoes, Amazon headband, vintage Christian Dior pink canvas St. Tropez bag via eBay, and Laura Lombardi gold plated suona necklace worn as a bracelet
It’s been 20 years since the hit franchise debuted, but “HSM” stardom didn’t translate to the same career opportunities it did for her co-stars, Coleman admits. While Hudgens and Zac Efron were being chased by paparazzi and thrown on the cover of teen magazines, Coleman found herself in a quieter lane. That’s where she figured out how to make her impact. She booked “Dancing With the Stars,” and other movie and TV appearances followed — but the work wasn’t always consistent. She found fulfillment in advocacy, launching her own nonprofit and becoming the first-ever United Nations Youth Champion in 2010. Two years later, at 31 and six years after “HSM” debuted, she was married. “I believed that settling down was the next right step,” Coleman says. For her, marrying her then-partner seemed like it would serve as the “safe container” she needed from the Hollywood world, where cancel culture was budding and the shelf-life of celebrity was unknown. A few years into the marriage, she knew she’d made a mistake. After a decade, “I had lost myself almost entirely,” Coleman says. Her own energy and light felt “dimmed” in her marriage, even if no one else could see it: “It took a lot of courage to walk away, because there wasn’t anything so blatantly obvious, other than the fact that I was dying inside.”
When I ask Coleman how she discovered her fire again, tears flood her eyes and she begins to cry. It’s not out of sadness, but a relief at what she’s found on the other side: a reality so much better than she ever imagined. Almost a year after leaving her husband, Coleman received a DM from Canadian figure skater Elladj Balldé inviting her on the ice to create content. She’d only skated once before, but something about being on the ice had felt freeing, so she signed up for her first skating lesson. It was exactly a year to the day that she left her marriage. “I knew that I was being given a second opportunity to prioritize myself,” Coleman says. “My whole life, I have not put myself first. I don’t think I’ve really had that kind of main character energy, and it’s always been about something bigger than me.”
But not when she’s on the ice. That’s when it’s all about her. “It really doesn’t matter to me how far I go as an individual,” Coleman says of her skating career. It’s about proving to herself and other women over 40 that you can do big, new, hard things. “Your life does not end post-the biggest thing in your career, your life does not end post-divorce,” she adds, as if it’s a mantra. Her big goals for next year are competing in the artistic division of adult skating and starring in a Broadway show. She’s moving from Connecticut to New York in September, where she’ll be taking voice lessons, auditioning, and following the trajectory of her “High School Musical” love interest, Corbin Bleu — who, by the way, she isn’t dating or trying to steal (Bleu is married), a debate that continues to resurface whenever the two are spotted together. “That’s not my man, that’s my brother, and I love him,” Coleman says. As for her actual dating life: “I am in the market.”
She’s looking for an emotionally mature partner; she’d be open to dating someone younger. As for kids, she let go of that desire a long time ago, but “I’ll be stepmommy,” she quips. But most importantly, this era is about finally prioritizing herself. “Where I’m at in life right now is a journey of rediscovering who I was before I made concrete decisions about what my life was supposed to look like,” she says. Every door feels open to her now: comedy, Broadway, action-movie star, game-show host, Olympic skating commentator. As if she’s manifesting her greatest intentions, Coleman declares: “I’m following my bliss and using my life energy and the time that I have on this planet to not just not tell other people what to do — but show them what’s possible by all the things that I try.”
Photo: Anna Koblish
Photo: Anna Koblish
Editorial Credits Editor-in-Chief: Kelsey Castañon
Senior Director of Special Projects: Lena Felton
Cover Story Writer: Alexis Jones
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Associate Social Talent Manager: Mia Marquez
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HairStylist: Berenz Castro
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