Insecure star, Yvonne Orji was in Nigeria for a couple days, and our friends over at Bella Naija got the opportunity to speak to the Christian actress about her faith, and her career choice. Check out what Yvonne had to say:
ON HER CAREER CHOICE
I knew that this was something that God wanted me to do; the first time I did comedy was at the Miss American-Nigerian Pageant and I didn’t have a talent. I heard the Holy Spirit telling me to do comedy but I was like no, because I hadn’t ever done it before. I was also afraid of rejection – from years of getting bullied and picked on, so I was like in front of Nigerians ke…Mba! I was just like they are going to be the worst audience and if I wasn’t funny there were just going to ignore me and talk over me. So I rebuked it. Then I heard the holy spirit say to me okay then, what else do you have? I was like okay I guess this is my first lesson in faith and trust; so I literally just wrote a 5-minute set of what it is to grow up in Nigeria and the funny things I had encountered in America and people laughed.
That was my in route and then I gave all the uncertainties to God. My relationship with my parents was really strained for a while, and I gave that to him too. Obviously, they were sometimes it was really difficult. There was no overnight success in my story. This has been 10 years in the making. A lot of those years was me being very hungry. I mean straight poverty and hoping and wishing and a little depression mixed in there. It was a journey, and on the other side of the journey is a blessing and now things are a lot better.
ON FINDING HER FAITH
Well, we were raised Catholic so we would go to mass and I went to an all-girls boarding school in America. My relationship with God was just like I knew he was important. The Catholic Church is like a 45 to an hour long service. I had my Catholic Bible. I knew what service was going to be spoken at any Catholic church around the world and you learn about the mystique of God. You learn about who he is in general terms and I knew generally I wanted God to be a part of my life. I knew he was important but I didn’t have a relationship with him. Then in my freshman year of college in George Washington University, I went to a Bible study where I met a minister who was a lot of things I wanted to be at that time. I wanted to be a doctor. She was in med school studying anesthesiology. I wanted to be beautiful, she was gorgeous. She also had a relationship with God that was like… personal. She would refer to him as “friend” and she talked about him like they were close and I was like I don’t know him like this, but I want to because it was so beautiful.
So just going to that church which was a non-denominational church, and seeing how people conversed with “Daddy” I was like I need that in my life and then I got Saved. So I’ve had a personal relationship with him since I was 17 till now.
Read the entire interview at Bella Naija
