
Niecy Nash is the definition of confident. The actress has risen from a working actress to an Emmy winner and Golden Globe nominee, starring in critically acclaimed series like When They See Us, Dahmer and Claws. She is a mother of three and happily married to her wife of nearly five years, Jessica Betts.
But Niecy’s journey wasn’t always this joyful. The actress had to heal her trauma and find self love and acceptance to build the life she wanted for herself. Niecy says that that journey began with therapy.
“For me, let me tell you — to be quite honest with you — it starts with therapy,” Niecy shared at her and Adrienne Maloof’s holiday party to benefit Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. “Because unless you heal that trauma, you cannot choose people in your life that will treat you the way you deserve to be treated. You have to treat yourself accordingly first, and then everybody else has to follow suit. But you’re the blueprint. You have to say, ‘here are the instructions on how it’s supposed to go.’”
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“I think most people would say, ‘oh no, I love myself.’ But you look at the decisions that you make and the partners you choose and the relationships,” Niecy said. “Not even love relationships, but friend relationships that you entertain. It’s a dog that does not hunt. You understand what I’m saying? Because you look at the fruit and you say, ‘wait a minute, if you do [love yourself], then how come these things are existing?’”
Niecy echoed similar sentiments when she thanked herself while accepting the award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie at the 2023 Emmys. The actress detailed her motivations shortly thereafter, explaining that she wanted her speech to be “a delicious invitation for people to do just that—believe in yourself and congratulate yourself.”
“Sometimes you’ve got to encourage what? Yourself,” Niecy, who currently stars on FX’s Grotesquerie, explained. “That’s why it’s not called mama-esteem, them-esteem, us-esteem. It’s called self-esteem ‘cause nobody got to believe it but you.”
Niecy encourages those who are struggling with self-love to “heal because all the good things are going to come on the other side of that.” Now that she has entered her glow-up era, Niecy has one goal she wants to accomplish: “I want to be a movie star.”
“I’ve done a lot onscreen. You know what I mean?” the actress added. “I want to see my face extra big [in the movie theater]. Extra large! I want my face to be extra large.”
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