I'm a model.

I'm a model.

I'm I'm I am a model.

I was not considered pretty.

I was considered gangly and bucktooth.

Those were just some nicknames.

Along with olive oil and Bucky Beaver.

I had frizzy curly hair glasses.

I was more content climbing trees and drawing and writing and escaping into nature in a fantasy world.

I grew up in a very how much in a society.

So I was one of like two or three black people in the school.

And so I think growing up is the kid in that environment.

I was very sensitive to it, and so I never thought of myself is really pretty.

You're beautiful.

But when I was offered to model in Toronto started to realize home.

I'm kind of cute.

I had just turned 18 and I was old enough to get a job as a waitress.

This photographer came in.

It was a busy moment of the night and he kept badgering me.

You should be modeling should be a model.

Listen, everybody tells me that Just get out of my face.

I don't want to do it.

That's not where I'm going.

I'm going to be the first lady of the United States with my boyfriend who's at West Point.

And about a week later, my boyfriend at West Point broke up with me and I thought, I don't want to be a Long Island when he gets home from school.

So I figured what would hurt me and my cousins and brother?

We were going to the beach and we had a cooler, and a security guard stopped us to check our cooler.

It took the alcohol, but at the same time, Lady ran out of a restaurant and was like, Oh, my God, have you ever thought of modeling?

She told me that in order for me to, like, start working that I would have to take my braces off, get them removed.

So I called the dentists and they were like, Oh, it's gonna be $1100 to remove it.

I was like, Whoa, I don't have the money to do that.

So I asked my dad if he had pliers, and I just popped him off.

I I had no money.

I didn't know what fashion really?

Waas and I had these, like boots that were super slippery.

So I was running around all these castings in New York, literally like falling thes really like strange hallways with thoughts of other girls who looked.

I mean, they didn't look happy like nobody was like, can't wait to get through this casting.

I felt like I was kicked.

Dropped into a very, uh, different world.

It was just like in a completely new life.

I was very attached to my mom was a hard process in the beginning.

Without my family, without my friends, I just I started working right away.

I didn't speak a word of English.

I went to Tokyo by myself.

There was no Skype or FaceTime.

And I spoke with my mom maybe four times in two months.

And I went there with a contract for two years and those sitting there crossing the numbers.

I was a child when you grown up, you just being taken care by your family by your parents.

And then you've been sent somewhere to the foreign country, and you have to figure out your weight by yourself.

So growing up in Uganda and being raised in Uganda and then 21 years old, you leave and you start a new life elsewhere.

With 20 hour plane ride back home is not the easiest thing.

When I started modeling, I still kept my housekeeping job at ST Cloud Hospital for, like, the 1st 78 months I came back and they were, like, grow.

Weren't you on the cover of Vogue?

Why are you here?

Cleaning toilets with us?

And I was like, because I don't know what's gonna happen a month from Alec.

What?

I really needed to be saved when I was 16 I wasn't in the safest environment.

Like my brothers and stuff.

We're getting in tow.

Bad shit.

I'm gangbanging in jail and stuff like that.

So I knew I didn't want to be a part of that.

I was just looking for a blessing.

I was praying every day, every day to get out of there, someway, somehow.

And then I saw a shooting, sire.

Yeah, should change from there for the longest time.

My parents that I was doing Playboy because their idea of models is like born, I guess because they don't really know what fashion is at all at.

Until my daughter said that I've got no tits.

There's no way I would ever be doing Playboy or porn.

I'm the face of Chanel.

He's like, Okay, nice.

Actually, I'm also on the cover of Teen magazine, which is like Times magazine, Easy or really a lot of magazine.

I just wanna get me a copy sent in Nigeria.

So Ties magazine he recognizes.

Chanel doesn't care about at all.

I always looked at my career like a brick wall.

Every job had its own repercussions in every job helped me to build that brick wall.

My first shot with Abadan.

He did 48 by tens, double sides.

So eight shots Vogue cover.

Or it could have been.

I was three months into my career and I got the land comb worldwide contract, you know, making $100,000.

Basically, there was a huge contract in the 19 seventies.

My father, literally he was white when he opened the paycheck, and he said to me, Take this money and put it in the bank because you've got four years.

I don't know why he chose four years walking with my dad in homes in Siberia and they were building this beautiful new, huh?

Building the residential building.

And I was looking at that.

I was like, Oh, my God, that's so beautiful.

I want to leave here.

He said, don't even dream about it.

We will never be able to live in this in this place.

And I looked at him and I was like Like, I'm not going to listen to you.

Here I am in New York, living in their luxury condo.

The title of the Shoot for American vote was the world's next top models.

I would go to the stands like every day in every hour when they knew it was gonna be like those couple of days it was gonna be out to the day that he came out.

I was like, Oh, my God isn't going to come out today.

Do they think they're gonna cut me out of the picture?

Like when things are so big, I always think, deserve Am I gonna be in it?

Is it gonna be really for real American vote to me was always the separation between the girls who had done it on the girls who had it.

And I finally booked it.

The magazine comes out and I am so excited to show it to everybody.

And when I opened it up, they had cropped head of every photo.

And, you know, there was, like, two page, you know, two page spread of my legs and my back, and they're like the side of my head.

And I had to bring its people.

I swear this is real.

This is me.

I did Valentina campaign and everyone like Mike such a big deal.

I was like, I'm alone and shoot like its father that I realized, OK, campaigns are slower back thing.

I still got his house, huh?

Kinda sorta pool is here.

What should I do?

And she speaks my language so I could just go up to a neck, speak to her, and I did not have the balls to do that.

So I literally stand in the corner and take sneaking picks off.

Can't and I think about it.

And now that's actually a bit more creepy.

My first show was for Prada, which was very intimidating, and I was so scared in the entire show, my legs were just shaking.

They were complete Jell O have been all around the world already in just the six months that I've been modeling when before I had never even really left the Southern states.

I love doing shoots where I'm with girls that I love working with.

And I also really love working with people who have really strong artistic vision.

Alexander McQueen's Stephen myself having pin all the people that I kind of look up to.

I mean, I've been really lucky to work with the very best photographers and designers, so I'm I mean, I could just name them all, basically, for models.

You know, every time you have a job, it's almost like you're going through a job interview again, and you have to learn how to not take it personally.

But that's virtually impossible to do because it's about you when they see us on the runway, those minutes on the runway.

They don't see what happened before that, that there were hundreds off rejections, hours off gassings, the whole process before that means of glory on the runway.

First you want to book the job, then you want Thio have more than one look in the show.

There's a lot of competition and I hate competition, but I'm very competitive I never felt that desperate competition.

I have to get this over you.

Sometimes I I shied away from really doing my best in a casting because I saw another girl who was up for the part that I thought, you know, she really needs this, You know?

What about that?

Made you cry.

Oh, just There was so many desperate people I came across over the years that you wanted to reach out and help that you knew would do anything, anything for that moment off fame or fortune.

And they sold their souls.

I had friends that died for this business.

If I could give myself advice as a young model, it would be thio Let things go and let things happen.

Don't compare yourself to nobody Don't take shit from nobody bu And don't be apologetic about it Re stone Because there's gonna be a lot of people trying to test you trying to break in China.

Thank you.

Out of your friend.

I came from the depths of hell and became a model s six team.

If you go into some hard things like, you won't make it up for real, okay?