Remember Victoria Rowell, the actress who played “Drucilla Winters” on The Young & The Restless?
Well one thing many don’t know is that she has a child with a very well know music artist whose ben in the game for decades. in fact he comes from a very well known family.
In fact, they dated for years, but never married. Victoria’s ex and father of her child is none other than…
Wynton Marsalis, the famous 9 time Grammy winning jazz musician.
You may have heard of him, he’s a member of the infamous Marsalis family– the jazz family consisting of Wynton’s Dad, Ellis Marsalis Jr.; and his brothers, Branford, Delfeayo, and Jason Marsalis. Wynton’s grandfather was also a jazz a musician who started it all for their family’s path, he’s the late Ellis Marsalis Sr.
Victoria and Wynton have a son named Jasper, who looks a lot like his Pops. The two of them were in a seven year relationship, but it ended quite a few years ago.
Victoria moved on and was once rumored to be dating rapper, 50 Cent around 2007, but that was never confirmed. The only thing that they did confirm was that they were great friends and Victoria revealed on a radio show that she’s cooked breakfast for 50 Cent before…hmmmm. We’ll just leave that one alone…LOL.
After the whole 50 Cent rumor thing, Victoria moved on to the married life and tied the knot with Atlanta artist, Radcliffe Bailey in 2009.
Unfortunately that didn’t last and the two quietly divorced late last year (2014). They had no children together, so their divorce was pretty simple. The only thing they allegedly requested of each other in the divorce settlement is that neither one of them bothers, or harasses the other. Their requests were a lil’ weird, but at least it was amicable.
Here’s a interesting bit of info about Radcliffe’s and Victoria’s wedding- actor Samuel Jackson walked…
Victoria down the isle. I guess she seems him as a big brother or father figure, so that probably was an honor for Jackson to do. Y’all know Samuel Jackson has a tendency to let more than a few curse words slip out every now and then, but I’m pretty sure he behaved himself at the wedding…LOL.
Here’s a very random Old School fun fact about Victoria: She wasn’t always an actress, she actually was a ballet dancer, but she’s stated that she could never go as far as her ballet friends were able to go at that time, because she was Black.
So what’s she doing nowadays? One thing she’s doing is aging gracefully: Victoria’s 56 years old now and she’s just as beautiful as ever.
She’s an advocate for equal rights and equal opportunity for African Americans within our society and within the entertainment world. She actually filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against CBS (the home of The Young & The Restless) in February of this year (2015).
Last year Victoria finally got frustrated with the lack of racial diversity behind the scenes of the show and she posted a series of tweets taking shots at it for not having enough African-Americans in higher ranking, decision making positions. “Young & Restless on air for 40 years, loyally watched by their absolute competitive-edge audience (blacks) & not one black Exec producer?” – she tweeted. The lawsuit is still pending.
Victoria is still doing what she does best- acting. You can catch her on Netflix in a new movie that Queen Latifah produced titled, November Rule. The film also stars singer, Macy Gray, actresses Tatyana Ali (of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), LaLa Anthony and more.
