FEATURED
Jacquie Wayans was an only child, raised by a single mom. She found out very early on that she had a great imagination, which as an only child, that’s not uncommon. She loved, right away, being in front of a camera, she loved singing, she created skits in her mind, she was able to see movies in her head and things of that nature, from the time she was really young, but because of the dynamic between Jacquie and her mom and because her mom was a single parent, there really wasn’t a lot of play time. “Because my mom was a very strict authoritarian, I realized very quickly that it was important to please her,” Jacquie explained. [Laughing]
In my interview with Jacquie, she reminisced about a moment at a Sunday school presentation. “I think it was probably my first monolog and I stood up there and someone had given me the advice of picking out a person in a crowd with a friendly face to look at and distinctively, the first person to look at was my mom, of course, but she suddenly had that face of “Ok don’t mess it up.” I looked around and found a face to lock into and I believe it was my Sunday school teacher who I adored. I had a great
time with the presentation and when I was done, that first set of applause that you ever receive and to see everyone’s responses and the hugs and kisses, I realized afterwards it was at that moment, at a very early age, that I realized ok, this is what I want to do,” she cited.
Jacquie was raised going to church and sincerely believed that she had a relationship with God. She grew up attending the Methodist Church, but explained that she had never heard the gospel until she met a friend in middle school who shared the gospel with her and even then Jacquie said it was hard for her to wrap her faith around it, because she thought all you had to do is love God. But her salvation didn’t come in until much later on when she was nineteen and in college. At the time, her whole pursuit was to get into the entertainment industry. She would have her moments wanting God in her life, but she also wanted the entertainment industry. “I felt if I gave up one, I couldn’t have the other. So I kept Him on hold until I figured that I just couldn’t do it on my own,” said Jacquie. Once she accepted that, the whole vision of how she delivered was with the same