Before throwing the subtle shade at her grandma, Amara Skye told Essence that her family is close-knit.

“We’re a young family,” she told Essence. “My grandmother’s mother raised me for a little bit. My grandmother is a great-grandmother to my daughter. So we’ve created that connection. There’s only five of us in our family. We’re all we’ve got, so we take each other real close.”

Skye added that she’s especially close with Goldberg. The pair even share a birthday (Nov. 13).

“Me and my grandma are super close. She’s everything,” she said. “It gets frustrating because it’s like, how am I going to compete with that? But I’m lucky enough to have that.”

While Goldberg is an undeniable superstar, Skye shared that she’s just like every grandparent — annoying at times, but filled with so much love for their family.

“I just feel like people know my grandmother for being Whoopi. She’s iconic, she’s political, everything she says holds water, but that’s the viewer’s eyes,” she added. “She’s my grandmother and she’s also really a grandmother. People who are lucky enough to have them know, grandmothers are annoying and it’s another parent. You love her, but she’s annoying, and you know, it’s family.”

Goldberg raised Skye and the 32-year-old’s mother, Alexandrea Martin-Dean, who Goldberg had at a young age.

 

 

“She wants us to be real people. Stuff is not just handed to us. It could be, but it’s not,” Skye said. “I just want people to know that I really worked hard for my position and the stuff that I did. I did a lot without my grandmother’s help. But the fact that she’s there to give me the help, you know, I don’t want to run it up. I want to do what I can do.”

And Skye’s proving that she can do a whole lot. The mother of one is an accomplished painter and doodle artist and recently appeared on ABC’s Claim to Fame, a Big Brother-inspired show where the contestants are the relatives of celebrities.