Tiffany Haddish "watched people be murdered" in front of her when she was a teenager.
The ‘Girls Trip’ actress attended a memorial service for George Floyd – who died after a police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes – in Minneapolis last week and admitted one of the reasons she wanted to be there was because she understood the devastation felt by his loved ones due to her own experiences.
Speaking on ‘Late Night With Seth Meyers’, she said: "The thing that made me really want to be there is I have watched my friends be slaughtered by the police.
"I have watched people be murdered in front of me. And as a 13-year-old, 14-year-old girl, you know, and there was nothing I could do, except, ‘No, don’t do that!.’ Just yelling out. What does that do?
"And so I wanted to be there in support of the family because I understand how they feel."
The 40-year-old star also felt like she was able to mourn the other people she knows who have passed away in similar circumstances at the service.
She added: "And being there was like being there for all my friends whose funerals I already went to, all my friends who passed away, all the people that I went to school with who’ve passed away, have been locked up for no reason just ’cause they can’t afford a good lawyer or, you know, accused of things that they didn’t do."
Tiffany said being at the service was "powerful" and she "cried so much", particularly when those assembled stood in silence for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the time police officer Derek Chauvin – who has been charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter – knelt on George’s neck.
She said: "I was crying so much, and it was like tears of, not just for Floyd, but for all of those people that passed away and all of my friends and my family members that are locked up.
"It was like all the tears that I ever wanted to cry were coming out…
"When they had that moment of silence – that eight minutes and 46 seconds of silence on that stage – and I’m standing there, next to one of the mothers of a victim, and the quietness and then the thought of what if someone’s knee was in my neck for this long? How helpless were my friends when they were being attacked, you know?"