Raven-Symoné Says She ‘Never Really Liked’ Acting and Did It for the Money

It turns out that Raven-Symoné never enjoyed acting.

The That’s So Raven star made the confession during a recent interview with Tavis Smiley on Los Angeles’ KBLA Talk 1580 radio station.

“I never really liked acting,” Symoné, 38, said in a clip of the interview circulating on social media. “Take any being at three years old and thrust them into a school of one type of talent and saturate them until they're 35 years old—they're going to be really good at it.”

“You know, 10,000 hours times 15. And I remember I was between the ages of 17 and 23 when this thought came across of, ‘I have no passion,’” Symoné recalled. “People would say, ‘You want to do a job? You have to be passionate about it.’ I said, ‘How much money is it?’ ‘Well, no, no, no. Passion.’”

“I said, ‘Well, my passion comes with the amount of zeros. So how much passion do you need me to have for this?” she said with a laugh.

However, the former child star explained that she wasn’t able to tap into her passion until she felt able to turn down acting opportunities she would normally have accepted.

In a twist of fate that she credits to “the universe,” she recalled being offered the opportunity to become the host of the televised Scrabble game show, based on the board game from Hasbro.

“It's like, ‘Oh, that's what passion feels like,’ because I'm a gamer. I love video games. And so I was able to free up energy to allow the universe to say, ‘Here's something you would actually like to do in the position that you've been in for all of your life,’” Symoné said.

A reboot of That’s So Raven titled Raven’s Home premiered on the Disney Channel in 2017. It wrapped up its sixth and final season last September.

Scrabble, hosted by Raven-Symoné, premiered earlier this month and airs new episodes Thursday nights on The CW.