*Jennifer Holliday appeared on “Tamron Hall” Wednesday for a special performance of her Grammy Award-winning hit “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going.”
The original star of Dreamgirls on Broadway also discussed her past battle with depression, struggle with her weight, and her suicide attempt.
“I know that a lot of people don’t know a lot about me, I’m usually, you know, pretty quiet. But it has been a difficult one. And at first, struggling with depression, even trying to commit suicide by the time I was 30, and just a difficult life,” Holliday said on the show.
She continued, “You know, I started so young, not as a child actress, but as a teenager going into a young lady. So by the time I was 27 years old, my career was over. I had to file for bankruptcy at 27 years old, my recording career just didn’t take off as I had hoped it to and a lot of that was image with the weight.”
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Holliday added, “You know they just didn’t want to back me or support me because they figured ‘you know, well she’s overweight,’ and back then the ‘80s had just started to go into video and TV and stuff, so it’s been a long, difficult run.”
The Tony winner has had several career setbacks and a multiple sclerosis diagnosis in 1999.
“When I first sang it, I was 19 going on 20 years old,” Holliday previously told The Post. “And as I became a young woman and then a real woman and then a grown-ass woman, the song took on different meanings. It’s a song of survival today. It’s like, ‘And I’m telling you that I’m still here. I’m not going.’ So for me, more so than anything, it’s me telling the world — and telling myself — that I’m worthy to still be here and that I still have a lot more to offer.”
Watch Holliday’s performance on “Tamron Hall” below.
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