Tyriq Withers Explains Growing into 27 and His Voice

Tyriq Withers said he is "stepping into who I am now" while talking about identity, emotional expression, and his place in Hollywood. The 27-year-old actor used an interview to trace how football, Florida State, and his early screen work pushed him toward a sharper sense of self.

At 27, Withers said his growth is tied to learning how he handles feeling, not just performance. "In childhood, my emotions were always so suppressed," he said. "So now at 27, I’m understanding that people connect with emotion and that’s how I heal."

Florida State to Atlanta

Withers grew up playing football, walked on at Florida State, and served as chapter president of Alpha Phi Alpha there before acting took over. In 2022, he booked a role on Donald Glover’s FX show Atlanta, a job that put him in the episode "Rich Wigga, Poor Wigga" as Aaron, a biracial high school student who has spent most of his life passing for white.

That casting gave him a role built around the kind of pressure he is now discussing in public. Withers said the episode dealt with biracial tension honestly in a way that most scripts would not dare, which is a narrower and riskier lane than the broad, easy parts rising actors are often handed.

Therapy and family voice

Therapy helped him, Withers said, but so did the people around him. He said his friends pushed him to keep trying to articulate what he was actually feeling, and his grandmother and aunt Diane reminded him that he has "a light inside of me that shines, even if I don’t realize it."

That emotional framework carried through the interview’s sharpest line: "The black experience, it runs deep. There’s a river that flows through us all and wherever that river goes, we always know that feeling." Withers delivered it while discussing his work on Atlanta and the way he thinks about Black identity on screen, which keeps the conversation grounded in craft rather than branding.

Two more projects ahead

After Atlanta, Withers appeared in Tell Me Lies, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Him, and Reminders of Him, and he has two more projects in some stage of production. That gives him a growing slate, but the interview’s real value is in how plainly he describes the shift from athlete to actor, and from reacting to emotions to using them.

For a performer moving through multiple projects at 27, the takeaway is straightforward: he is not selling reinvention as a slogan. He is describing the work of making his voice audible, and he says he is grateful to keep pushing that conversation.