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Sister spotlight!

First-time nominee Andra Day, 36, hit the 2021 Academy Awards red carpet Sunday with a special someone by her side: her big sister!

As the pair walked the carpet, the singer said of her sibling's big debut, "She made it! My big sister made it!"

Speaking to reporter Giuliana Rancic during E!'s Live from the Red Carpet, Day explained that she was always planning to bring her sister as her date, despite the rest of her family trying to win the coveted invite.

"It was just a way for me to get free stuff and gifts from them," Day teased of her loved ones competing to earn a spot at the awards show.

Ahead of the Oscars, where Day is nominated for her performance as the titular music icon in The United States Vs. Billie Holiday, the actress spoke to PEOPLE about her experience working on the film.

Day admitted that she wasn't fully confident in her performance and presumed she "was retired" from acting altogether after completing the Lee Daniels-directed film.

"I truly was definitely out of my depth the entire time," Day recalled of making the movie.

"I would have the thought, in my mind, that maybe they're just settling because they realized they can't get any better from me. Or that's the best they're going to get, and I'm already here," the three-time Grammy nominee added. "So there was always that underlying thought that they're just accommodating me right now."

The experience of portraying Holiday, who wrestled with drug addiction until her death at the age of 44 in 1959, took a toll on Day in her first major film role.

"If you could envision or feel somehow in your body, what it feels like to be operating purely on adrenaline for three and a half, four months straight. That's really what it was on set for me," Day said. "It was literally like three days without sleeping. But adrenaline is some s---."

As Day previously revealed, she lost 39 pounds to prepare for the part, telling PEOPLE Every Day podcast host Janine Rubenstein that she "couldn't look too muscular" and had to look thin as a result of "starvation and drugs."

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Despite the intensity of the experience, Day said she'd likely act again if the part is right.

"The reality is, if I'm agreeing to do roles, it has to grab me, the way Billie grabbed me," she said. "And I don't mean like being intrigued, meaning my spirit has to be sort of be called out to it. Because that's really what Billie was."

The 93rd Academy Awards are airing live on Sunday, April 25 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on ABC.

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