Naomi Ackie was little-known within the U.S. when she was tapped for a job as Jannah in J.J. Abrams’s 2019 saga capper Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
However the stress and intense fanfare that comes with becoming a member of the Star Wars universe may solely partly put together the 30-year-old London native for her newest excessive profile function: enjoying the beloved late pop star Whitney Houston within the new biopic I Wanna Dance With Anyone.
“In some methods [it did], figuring out that you’re getting into into one thing that lots of people have a way of possession over and an enormous love for. Completely,” Ackie tells Yahoo Leisure in a current interview. “However it additionally felt very totally different… It felt like fairly a solitary journey at instances, though I had an enormous quantity of assist from everybody.”
Ackie, who has additionally appeared in Physician Who and The Finish of the F—king World, was little question daunted by the function, which required her to sing reside on set, even when her vocals have been ultimately changed by Houston’s recordings.
“It is a journey,” she says. “And I feel once I acquired the half and knew I used to be beginning a portion of my life and dedicating a portion of my life to Whitney, I simply needed to maintain onto religion that if I labored arduous and I chipped away on the issues I do know I wanted to do to inform this story, that the top consequence can be one thing that folks would get pleasure from and be touched by.”
Directed by Kasi Lemmons (Eve’s Bayou, Harriet) and written by Anthony McCarten (Bohemian Rhapsody), the movie follows Houston from her discovery by Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci) at her mom’s lounge present in Newark, N.J. to her ascent to world superstardom to her tumultuous relationship with husband Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders) to her battles with medicine and in the end her tragic demise in 2012 on the age of solely 48.
However one side of her story — and throughline in I Wanna Dance With Anyone — that’s sure to get renewed consideration with the discharge of the movie is Houston’s relationship together with her greatest good friend, longtime assistant, and at one level, lover, Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams).
Whitney and Robyn meet-cute at a park within the movie’s opening minutes, transfer in collectively and are in a romantic relationship till the newly-signed singer’s profession begins to take off and her father-manager (Clarke Peters) insists she solely see males.
Whereas in actual life Houston by no means publicly mentioned the same-sex relationship when she was alive, Crawford revealed intimate particulars surrounding it in her 2019 memoir A Music for You: My Life With Whitney Houston. Brown has additionally confirmed it in newer years. However gossip concerning the nature of Houston and Crawford’s relationship, particularly earlier of their lives, circulated for many years.
“It is one thing that I gotta say as a younger actor in New York Metropolis and type of within the Black showbiz circuit, all of us knew about,” says Lemmons, who appeared in motion pictures like College Daze (1988) and Candyman (1992) earlier than pursuing filmmaking herself. “We did not know as a result of we weren’t contained in the room, however all of us speculated about Robyn. In her life she was clearly someone who was very near her.
“However in speaking to people who knew her [for the film], it was apparent that this was really a really vital relationship. It was a friendship that went on for many years. And we needed to discover a technique to honor it and to be truthful to it. Truthfully, I feel it is vital as a result of there was a whole lot of stress [on Houston] from the surface world to adapt to expectations. I feel that put stress on their relationship and you must ask your self, what it might’ve been like in the event that they did not have that stress? What would’ve occurred to them?”
Some individuals who knew the “How Will I Know” and “I Will At all times Love You” hitmaker, like certainly one of her longtime songwriters, Diane Warren, have stated that they imagine Houston would nonetheless be alive in the present day had she continued her relationship with Crawford.
“I used to be actually younger, so I keep in mind listening to whispers, however not even actually sufficiently old to essentially perceive what individuals have been whispering about,” says Williams (Black Lightning), who performs Crawford within the movie however has not but met her. “So I feel to now know the reality and it now being uncovered or found or shared on this movie, I simply was actually excited for Robyn to have the ability to reside in her fact and have the ability to do it out loud.
“They meant quite a bit to one another, and it was a sensitive, delicate space. She misplaced a good friend, and I imagine they have been soulmates and nonetheless are. So I simply needed to strategy it actually fastidiously and signify Robyn in one of the best mild that I may.”
For Ackie, it was vital to her that Houston’s property was concerned within the venture.
“Once I learn the script, I used to be so blissful to see that Robyn was included, as a result of it is an enormous a part of her life,” Ackie says. “You’ll be able to’t inform Whitney Houston’s story with out Robyn Crawford. They have been mates and extra, and what I feel is so lovely about their relationship is that they morph from one factor to a different, and so they by no means put a label on it. And so, in a way, we will not actually put a label on it. However what they did have was a deep love for one another. And to indicate that love, that she was liked in that means by Robyn is an attractive factor to indicate.”
I Wanna Dance With Anyone opens Friday.
Watch the trailer:
