When Jay Ellis was asked what stayed with him from a summer that took him through seven countries in two months, he first thought of a rabbit stew on a Greek island.
“I can think of this meal that I had in Crete. It was this rabbit stew that is just stuck in my brain,” Ellis told Travel Noire. “I know that is not something that we eat typically here in the States, but it was absolutely amazing.”
The actor, who starred as Lawrence on HBO’s Insecure and now stars in and produces ABC’s The Rookie: North, premiering Jan. 6, 2027, spoke with Travel Noire, six days before Insecure’s 10th-anniversary reunion in Inglewood, California. Insecure, which premiered in October 2016, recently appeared on The New York Times’ list of the 100 best TV shows of the 21st century. Ellis’ relationship with travel goes back much further than his acting career, to a father who has worked for American Airlines for decades.
A Childhood Shaped By The Airline
Ellis grew up taking advantage of the flight benefits that came with his father’s job, and he credits those trips with the way he still moves through the world. The family used them “to really go kind of explore the world and the States and just different parts of different countries and cultures,” he said.
“That was just such a huge part of my life,” Ellis said. “Those experiences, in a lot of ways, really shaped my love of travel and gave me appreciation for the little things that can make the trip memorable and better and stick with you and last forever.”
That family connection is part of why he is now working with Citi and American Airlines on the newly enhanced Citi / AAdvantage Executive World Legend Mastercard. Over the summer, he stopped into several Admirals Club locations, which he said came as a benefit of the card.
“Especially traveling with kids, it’s a place to kind of calm a little bit, collect ourselves, grab a meal and then go start a journey,” he said.
The card’s updated benefits include up to $500 back on eligible American Airlines Vacations purchases and up to $100 back on in-flight and eligible Admirals Club purchases, along with Lyft credits and hotel and car rental status perks listed in the same announcement.
After a summer of constant movement, Ellis still talks about the journey itself with the enthusiasm of someone new to it. “I love leaving wherever I am staying and getting in a car and beginning my journey to an airport, through an airport, on a plane and then obviously wherever I’m landing,” he said. “To me, it’s this thing of exploration.”
From Lake Garda To A Basketball Game In Belgrade
The Italian leg of the trip took him to Lake Garda, where he was struck by “how blue and clear it was in places” and by the scale of a lake ringed by mountains.
“It’s a massive lake. It’s the biggest lake in Italy, so it actually looks like an ocean to some degree because you can’t see across it,” Ellis said.
In Serbia, Ellis watched the national basketball team play in Belgrade and remembered seeing Nikola Jokić on the floor. “That was really cool,” he said. Paris came with friends, food, sightseeing, and vintage shopping. “Paris is Paris. What can you say?” he said.
Through it all, Ellis tries to follow the same rule wherever he lands. “One of the things that I try to do everywhere I go is I want to do what a local does as much as I can,” he said. “I don’t want the tourist highlights. I will do that at some point, but what I really want to do is find and understand the way people live in whatever place I’m visiting.”
“Food is such an expression of love,” he said, adding that he notices commonalities in how people share food, spend time together, and spend time with children.
Would Jay Ellis Travel With Lawrence?
Ten years after Insecure premiered, Ellis still speaks warmly about Lawrence and says the character was easy to misunderstand at the beginning.
“In a normal situation, I don’t think I love the characters that I portray as much as I have loved Lawrence,” he said. “But I do think early Lawrence, season one Lawrence, was probably misunderstood.”
As Lawrence grew over the following seasons, Ellis said, viewers began recognizing parts of the character in people they knew, and many still come up to him to admit they were once a Lawrence themselves. One of his friends likes to claim some credit for the growth of a Lawrence in her own life. “When I met him, he was Lawrence, and then I got him to where he is today,” Ellis recalled her saying.
He doesn’t let her take all the credit. “Okay, but he had to go through his own growth to get there, by the way,” he said. “So did Issa. She was a mess.”
When asked whether he would take Lawrence on a seven-country trip, Ellis said yes, though not for the full two months.
“Lawrence to me was an amalgamation of like three or four really good friends of mine, and probably even some of my own life to some degree,” he said. “I think I would travel with Lawrence, yeah. For sure. I don’t think I could do more than like a week.”
Ellis called Lawrence “a little in his head” and said the character struggled to verbalize his emotions.
“I feel like I would be constantly trying to pull it out of him, and that would get old,” he said. “But he got there when he got older.”
