OVERCOME ADVERSITY

“The first thing that came to mind was just, this is something that doesn't happen to girls in South Africa. Like, you know, it's like, I remember looking at a map, and I was like, God, we're all the way down here. What's going on up there? I remember like feeling very lucky that I made it out here, and like my greatest dream, like my like lottery win would have been to be able to support myself as an actor and not have a second job.”

“Violence and turmoil was something that was like everyday life in South Africa. If you got in the car, if I went to the bank with my mom, that was something that you just saw on the side of the roads. And for sure, I saw things that I shouldn't have seen at a very young age concerning violence because that was just the circumstances. So there was a lot of talk constantly about apartheid.”

“He was a full-blown functioning drunk. But he had moments in his life where he would kind of like go missing. Like we just wouldn't know where he was. And he would usually kind of return in a state that was pretty severe. And that's, you know, it would get messy and loud and my mom's not a wallflower either. So she wasn't just like sitting and taking it.”

“The worst thing was they would ice each other. They wouldn't talk to each other for like, there was like a big fight and then they wouldn't talk to each other for like three weeks. And I didn't have siblings and my house just went silent. It just went totally silent. Like no one would even say good morning to each other. And like I would be so scared to say something.”

“I felt like my independence also had to just come from like an emotional place. My house wasn't always stable. And so I felt very responsible to make sure that I was taken care of. There was this kind of thing that by the time I moved out of the house, I knew how to take care of myself on many levels.”