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ABC/Randy HolmesMary J. Blige has been busy behind the scenes with a new Netflix series and two new albums up her sleeve that empower women.
The nine-time Grammy-winner told GMA that one piece of advice she would offer her younger self is to embrace who she was as a young artist.
I would say please stop being afraid of who you are because I was very afraid of who I was,” Blige admitted. “That was too much for me.”
But now, it seems the powerhouse artist has fully embraced her best self and is using it to inspire her two new albums.
“My fans are going to be super happy,” she gushed. “It reflects my life, you know. It reflects all of our lives as women that are like bosses and know they can say they are bosses right now, they’ve earned the right to do that.”
Blige is just one of many women who have promoted females in the industry.
“I think there’s a movement, there’s something happening where we’re banding together and lifting each other up and women are helping each other to do better,” Blige said.
She has a new role as Cha Cha, a time-traveling assassin, on the upcoming Netflix series The Umbrella Academy that won her over as soon as she read the script.
“When I saw the script and saw who Cha Cha was, she knew hand-to-hand combat and the script was amazing anyway,” she said. “But just the fact that I get to fight like I get to learn martial arts, I was like, ‘yes!'”
Blige said she trained for “about five months.”
“I was amped to go train for martial arts,” she said, explaining they prepared for fights daily. “So it was a lot of acting and fighting.”
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