Javicia Leslie is the daughter of a reverend on the new CBS drama God Friended Me and in real life the Christian actress grew up in church.

Leslie, the 31-year-old budding actress who plays Ali Finer on God Friended Me, took a walk down memory lane with Ambo TV recently when she detailed her church experiences as a youth.

“I’m from Maryland and I went to First Baptist Church of Glenarden. That’s where I got baptized,” she told Ambo.” I started off with First Baptist and the pastor was Pastor Jenkins–so that was really cool. I don’t know why, but he kind of reminded me of Kirk Franklin because…he found a great way of preaching the word in a way where the younger minds could understand and apply it to their lives.”

The actress said her home church was eventually taken over by Zion Church which was led by Pastor Keith Battle at the time. She shared fond memories of having the freedom to wear whatever she wanted at church.

“When you grow up [in] the South and bordering the south we wore dresses and stuff like that to church. Well, this is the kind where we could kind of come as is and he just really wanted people to come in,” Leslie shared. “I liked him because it didn’t feel like a peer as in age but it felt like someone that really understood what the youth is going through, especially in our city.”

You can catch Javicia Leslie as Ali Finer on the new CBS series God Friended Me each Sunday at 8 p.m. Ambo TV will be releasing exclusive video interviews and articles about the God Friended Me series each Sunday.

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