Superstore’s Nichole Sakura Changed Her Name To Reclaim Her Heritage – Looper

Nichole Sakura’s birth name is Nichole Sakura O’Connor. As the name implies, Sakura is half Japanese (her mother), and half Irish (her father). But when she started her career in showbusiness, she was warned by her first agent that her Japanese heritage would cause problems for her, “because [she] didn’t fit into any one category — [she] didn’t seem Asian or White enough,” as she explained in an Instagram post. “I began to look at my Japanese side as a hindrance to my career, and something that would lessen my odds of getting work.”

Rather than use the name O’Connor, Sakura adopted the stage name Bloom, based on the translation of Sakura, which means cherry blossoms. She wanted a name that was “as ambiguous as possible and [would] downplay my Japanese side,” she said. But in 2020, she took her real name back. “However, as I’ve grown into myself and my career, I’ve come to feel more and more how important it is to embrace who I am, including my name,” she shared. She appreciates that the entertainment industry is “now beginning to include more people of color and mixed backgrounds.”

Perhaps Sakura took advice from her own “The More You Know” segment in 2018. “Challenge yourself to acknowledge your own bias and intolerance,” she says in the PSA. “Expose discrimination wherever it happens, even if it’s your own.” Congratulations, Nichole.