Magical Teenager Amandla Stenberg Just Got The Best Compliment Any Mother Can Give From Beyonce Herself

A photo posted by amandla (@amandlastenberg) on

Beyonce is the Bill Murray of wonderful, life- and career-affirming compliments. Bill Murray’s entire film oeuvre could disappear overnight, and he’d still be remembered forever for his habit of manifesting into the lives of fans like a magical chaos spirit who pops up just long enough to photobomb a selfie, sign an autograph as “Miley Cyrus,” or just spin around, look someone dead in the eye and say, “Nobody will ever believe you that this happened!” But while Bill Murray is appearing all over the globe to spread chaos and weird stories like some sort of trickster god, Beyonce is a sun goddess spreading light and love through the power of the best compliments a person can give, which are of course even better because they’re coming from Beyonce.

If anyone deserves a compliment from Beyonce, it’s 17-year-old actress and activist Amandla Stenberg, and she just got the best compliment any mother can give, because Beyonce walked right up to her and said: “Hello, Amandla. I just wanted to tell you I want Blue to be just like you.”

Wow! A lot of people might say they want their daughters to grow up to be like Beyonce, but Beyonce says she wants her daughter to grow up to be like Amandla Stenberg, and that’s pretty amazing. Kids today say “Mom!” as a way of complimenting an older woman who they think is doing life right, like, “Be my mom!” This is the flip side of that. You’re doing life so well, I want my daughter to be like you.

“I felt like the hands of God were like gently caressing my entire body and soul, like I felt like I had reached nirvana, and I was like, “Thank you very much,”” Stenberg said. “I think I said something really lame and gushing about her to her face [laughing].”

If anyone deserves that compliment, it’s Stenberg. She first became famous for playing Rue in The Hunger Games, and unfortunately her touching performance earned her brutal Twitter harrassment from so-called Hunger Games fans who were upset that Rue was being played by a black actress. (This wasn’t even a case where a character’s race was changed for the movie. Rue is explicitly black in the books. These people just somehow completely missed that fact and decided to spout racist garbage on Twitter after it.)

Since then she’s grown from being a beautiful and talented child actress to a devastatingly intelligent and outspoken feminist and social justice activist with the grace and poise of a woman three times her age. She’s a vocal proponent of the Black Girls Magic movement, which is about uplifting and celebrating Black girls and women. 

Stenberg is amazing, and she’s just 17. It’s no wonder Beyonce thinks she’s a good role model for little girls like Blue Ivy. Give it 15 years and Stenberg will be 32, and all our little toddlers will be teenagers looking at Stenberg and saying, “Mom!”

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