\n\tIt took comedian and actress Gina Yashere\u2019s\u00a0house burning down in the L.A. fires to make her decide to leave, at least for now, the America she longed to get to as a child growing up in the East End of London.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve left. The universe gave me a good kick, \u2018you need to get out of America,\u2019 by burning down my house in Altadena,\u201d the Bob Hearts Abishola<\/a> co-creator and star tells The Hollywood Reporter at the Just For Laughs<\/a> comedy festival in Montreal.<\/p>\n \n\tYashere\u2019s home in a Black community in Altadena, just west of downtown Los Angeles, was destroyed in the Eaton fire that started on Jan. 7. She recalls getting the tragic news while in Costa Rica, where she has a second home.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI had a list of things to save if there\u2019s a fire encroaching, what to grab. And I wasn\u2019t able to save them because I wasn\u2019t there when it happened. So I lost some of my most treasured items,\u201d she adds, like her comedy notebooks and club date posters and media reviews. <\/p>\n \n\tAnd any hope of a return to rebuild her Altadena home was thwarted by her home insurance being canceled, even as she still owns the plot of land. So Yashere is dividing her time between Costa Rica and Toronto, where she lives for six months of the year while starring in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy<\/a> as an Academy instructor.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSo I\u2019m kind of out of America because, yeah, I\u2019m a citizen, but I\u2019m still a dark-skinned woman with an accent, and they\u2019re snatching people off the streets,\u201d she explains. That\u2019s quite a reversal for the British-born comic by way of Nigeria who left for America in the hope of better opportunity in sunny Los Angeles amid the palm trees and swimming pools she saw in American TV shows and movies growing up. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI went straight to L.A. because I wanted that Melrose Place lifestyle,\u201d Yashere recalls. But the climb to the top in Hollywood took far longer and was far harder than first envisioned. \u201cWe don\u2019t care how famous you are in England. You\u2019re not a draw here and only the headliners really get paid. The rest of you pretty much get nothing,\u201d she recounted of attitudes among comedy club bookers and owners in her early years in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n \n\tBut a feisty Yashere sat quietly in the back of clubs with her ears pricked up to hear of a slot opening up, if a comic was late or canceled, so she could get on stage to show her stuff, if only for 10 minutes. And she handed out flyers in front of clubs where she was performing and did endless publicity for her first comedy special, Laughing to America, which was shot in San Francisco.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI still felt I was going to get more opportunities here (in America). I just had to worker harder to get those opportunities,\u201d Yashere recounts. Other gigs opened up, including a second comedy special, Gina Yashere: Ticking Boxes and becoming a British correspondent on The Daily Show.<\/p>\n