Inspire Entertainment Magazine Spring 2014 - Vol. 4 | Page 14

Jennifer Holliday

I

t's been almost 20 years since Jennifer Holliday last
performed on a Broadway stage — and a little more
than that since recording pop music — but the Tony
and Grammy Award-winning power house is getting
back into the swing of things. Holliday first won fame by
turning a Broadway show tune into an anthem. With her performance of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" in the
musical Dreamgirls, she became a star on Broadway. But
Holliday's life and career offstage slipped out of control as
she battled obesity and depression. Over the last decade,
Holliday 53, became an ambassador for mental illness
(admittedly battling clinical depression for years); she also
suffers from multiple sclerosis (MS), which she revealed 17
years ago. The Houston native shares in her own words her
past health issues, her faith and her hopes for her new album, “The Song Is You.”

A Healthy Holliday—Holliday: I'm 53 years old. I
never thought that I would be sitting here talking to you. I
used to think, I said to myself, "I probably would've had a
much better career if I could invent myself something to go
into rehab." Because if you're an alcoholic or a drug addict,
it's just a sexier thing. And it's just a more acceptable thing.
But mental health problems still gets the door shut. Not only
did I try to take my own life, but those of us who are in the
spiritual world, others have tried to take my life as well. But
God made the difference for me, in the sense that he held

Interview by NPR

onto me, to love me so much, to keep leaving me here. But I
still had to choose life, though. I had to fight for it. I continually still fight every day for my life, not only still battling
mental health problems, but battling multiple sclerosis,
which also has depression as one of its side effects. So every
day I wake up, I don't know what it's going to be. I have
been blind. I have been paralyzed. But each day if I wake
up, then I know he's left me here for a reason, and I have to
say yes. And I have to get up. And I have to make the best
of that day.

Too Fat For Videos—Holliday: I didn't know what I
was going to do with my career. And I just kept gaining
more and more weight. I had ballooned up to 345
pounds. It was the age of videos, you know, we had just
started. So they said, "Well, Jennifer, you can sing but
you're unattractive. So if we make a video of you, we'd
have to stretch you, or put you in a shadow box and put
people around you. We just can't make videos with
you.” Then they said, “There’s this new surgery. It has
not been approved yet.” And that was gastric bypass. I
was one of the first to have that. I lost weight really
quickly. I lost all that weight, but still had the same issues. Two hundred pounds smaller...same issues. Baggage still there! Back to counseling! (Laughs) It was a
very painful time to go through. (cont. on next page)