FirstLadyB | Connecting Faith and Hollywood
Insecure star Yvonne Orji opened up about battling depression while trying to make it in Hollywood, and how a word from the Holy Spirit changed her life forever.
“I was literally looking depression in the face.”
On episode 4 of her podcast Jesus & Jollof with Luvvie, the actress shares:
“I was literally looking depression in the face. I could have let it take me out but it was just like, ‘God I’ve done everything as right as I could,'” she admitted thinking.
“I’m even helping other people live out their dreams when I don’t even have my dream yet. But I’m never going to be stingy, I’m always going to be a giver,” she recalled.
Orji didn’t have enough money to attend church, so she prayed for God to make a way for her to volunteer and attend Bible study.
“I said ‘God if you want me to volunteer at the church I need gas money.’ And there was sometimes where I only had enough money to get to church or to get to the Bible study,” Orji continued. “I was like, ‘God somebody is going to have to bless me with money to get back.'”
God answered her prayers and that began to break her depression.
Then a word from the Holy Spirit changed the course of her life forever. One day in 2014, Yvonne broke down sobbing to a friend after attending the NBCUniversal Short Film Festival because of how many young people she saw living their dreams.
While admittedly angry with God, she described hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit tell her, “what’s in your hand?”
The next day, searching for a revelation of the word, she opened her Bible up to Psalm 31: 14-15 which states, “I trust in you, O Lord..my times are in your hand.”
The scripture broke her hopelessness and Orji suddenly felt motivated to work at building her First Gen web series. Shortly after, she was asked to be a part of the cast on the hit HBO show “Insecure.”
