Niecy Nash's 'Trauma' from Her Brother's Murder Shaped Her 'Dahmer' Performance: 'I Know the Pain'
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The actress also said she still feels "very skittish" when working with firearms on set due to trauma of losing her brother and her mother's brush with gun violence
Niecy Nash didn’t have to look far to channel pain.
During an appearance on Entertainment Weekly’s Awardist podcast, the 53-year-old actress explained how her personal traumas allowed her to play the character of Glenda Cleveland with such raw emotion in Netflix's Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
Nash revealed that the plot of the controversial retelling of the serial killer’s life — which saw him killing predominantly young men of color — hit close to home after her younger brother, Michael Ensley, was murdered back in 1993. Ensley was shot to death at his high school over a love triangle. He was 17.
Niecy Nash/Facebook
Michael EnsleyA few years earlier, Nash's mother survived a shooting that began during a domestic dispute with her partner.
"There is a responsibility I have as a survivor to be a part of storytelling like that because I know — I know the pain, I know the trauma, I know the loss," Nash explained. "I still get very, very skittish when it comes to anything that I do that involves me having to shoot a gun or somebody pulling a gun on me.”
The Rookie: Feds star said guns on set “always give me pause” and revealed that she often finds herself unable to sleep the night before she knows she will film with a firearm.
“You show up with your full self and your full self includes your own personal trauma,” she added. “So the part of me that has to step on me in order to stand flatfooted in the art is always a challenge in those types of scenes."
Over the years, Nash has opened up about how gun violence has affected her family.
Back in October 2010, the Claws actress revealed that she watched her mother get shot in the back when she was just a teenager.
"When I was 15, I saw my mother get shot,” she told ABC7. “Her boyfriend was very abusive, and he shot my mother with a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun in front of her children, Easter Sunday morning, shot her down like a dog in the street. Thankfully my mother survived that incident."
In the wake of the Uvalde mass shooting in May 2022, Nash spoke out about the tragedy and reflected on how she lost her own brother in a school shooting.
"I'm so sad," the actress wrote over a photo of herself. "My brother was killed on his high school campus. It hits different cuz school is a place you should feel safe. I don't wish it on anyone."
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Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is now streaming on Netflix.
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