Actress Yvonne Orji is saving herself for marriage

“I wasn’t going to hide it just because I’m on TV,” the Nigerian-born star told People. “I’m grounded in who I am.”

Orji is so proud of her decision to wait, she’s created a clothing line to promote abstinence. “I have a clothing company called Rock Your Stance, and we sell shirts that say ‘Keeping it locked till I get that rock.’”

“Entertainment chose me,” she added. “Before any of this happened, I sat down with myself and with God. I said, ‘I know why I’m here. It’s to make you proud.’”

Deciding to be an actress wasn’t easy. Her parents were fully expecting her to become a doctor.

“It sounded noble,” she said. “But then I took organic chemistry and I was like, ‘Well, maybe not.’ I ended up getting my master’s degree in public health and then working in war-torn Liberia to stall from crushing my parents’ hopes and dreams.”

Things shifted for Orji when she summoned the courage to tell her family that being a physician wasn’t her dream.

“’It would take me eight years to become a doctor, but give me eight years to make it in entertainment,’” she recalled telling her family. “And I’m happy to say, I did it in seven!”

This article was originally published on the New York Post