“We’ll Keep Needing Each Other”: Bellamy Young on Purpose, Partnership, and the Power of Care
“We’re really in a moment of people having to reinvent, redefine, rediscover themselves. Our world changes so dramatically that I think it’s helpful for us all to remember that there’s no deadline and it isn’t over. We’ll keep finding things inside of us.”
On the WomenHeard podcast, host Julie Hochheiser Ilkovich interviews Bellamy Young, a film, TV, and Broadway actress, and a 2025 Matrix Honoree. Young earned a Critics’ Choice Award for her iconic role as President Mellie Grant on the Shonda Rhimes’s series Scandal, and she’s an ambassador for the global humanitarian organization CARE, for which she created the podcast She Leads with Care to uplift the stories of incredible female leaders from around the world. Her first novel, The Aetherion Code, a futuristic coming-of-age story co-written with her dear friend Fay Masterson, was published in July. Here’s a peek at her perspective on support systems, what it means to “adventure in all directions,” and more.
The Matrix Awards
Young received a Matrix Award in May and found the experience very moving. “Oh, it was quite humbling. . . . Just to be in the room with all those women was inspiring,” she says. “This year of honorees, what incredible humans, what huge contributions.”
But more than the recognition itself, what moved her most was the presence of the scholarship winners, the future of the industry. “You get to talk with them and meet them and hear their dreams and their ideas,” she says. “Talking to the women who can see what’s coming, who are dreaming it into being and connecting the dots . . . that was what made the night incredible.”
Care, Kindness, and Asking for Help
Throughout the conversation, Young often returns to the theme of care as a worldview and guiding principle. In a culture that undervalues empathy, Young speaks about the urgent need to reclaim kindness: “Caring about each other is not in vogue,” she says. “It’s so important to remember what we can do when we just are kind to each other.”
This sense of connection extends to her reflections on the challenges women face in the workplace today, especially when it comes to the relentless pressure to “do it all.” “We’re like multiverse dwellers,” she says. “The fact that we can do it all makes us feel like we have to do it all, every moment of every day.”
Young believes that asking for help is not a weakness, but a skill and a necessity. “Allow for support structures to be in place,” she says. “That isn’t a concession or a weakness in any way. It only streamlines my focus and allows me to excel where I can.”
This spirit of intentionality runs through Young’s entire philosophy of work and life. “I really believe we all came into the world to give very specific gifts,” she says. “Not everybody has everybody else’s gifts. So if we can get really clear on what we’re here to share, then we can prioritize that and build structures around that allow us to adventure in all directions, but really excel in what we’re here to share.”
Building Her Career
For Young, storytelling wasn’t a strategic career choice—it was a lifeline. Adopted out of foster care as a baby, her adoptive parents tried to build opportunities for her. That led her to the arts at a young age: “Any chance I got to not be me for a while was absolutely an oasis,” she says. The stage became her sanctuary.
Still, the path wasn’t linear. Young initially planned to study physics at Yale only to realize her true calling was storytelling. “I did an English degree and a theater degree,” she says. “My mom was an English teacher, one of the best I ever had.”
Young also speaks about the powerful, almost spiritual role that voice teachers played in her life. “When you’re singing, there’s nowhere to hide,” she says. Singing, for her, became not just performance, but therapy, a process of facing pain and moving through it. “You just have to face the trauma, and you have to breathe through it, open a vessel that lets it go through,” she says.
In this way, her voice teachers did more than help her improve her craft; they helped her process grief, shame, and the residue of a complicated past, through breath and vibration and resonance. “They transformed my personal ability to walk without shame through this life,” she adds. It’s a lesson in the deep power of mentorship, and in how art, when held with care, can be healing.
Even as her career grew, from stage to Broadway to eventually landing the life-changing role on Scandal, Young never lost touch with the humanity at the core of her work. “Those years since Scandal have been just so beautiful,” she says. “People still talk to me on the street, in the airport, anything, [saying] like ‘Watching Scandal helped me get through my mom’s cancer.’ . . . It was a life-changer.”
She also reflects on the transformative power of working in a matriarchy under Shonda Rhimes. “You were supported in doing it all,” Young says. “If you needed to breastfeed, we built a little area on our soundstage. . . . You were protected and not exploited, which is so often the path of the female narrative. It was eye-opening.”
In today’s fast-changing landscape, Young’s words remind us that leadership doesn’t require perfection but it demands presence. And no matter where we are in our journeys, we’re never too late, too far behind, or too much on our own to begin again.
Because, as she shows us so vividly, when women lead with care, the world changes for good.
Thank you to Bellamy Young for joining us! For the full interview, listen to NYWICI’s WomenHeard podcast.
