English actress, Naomi Ackie who plays Whitney Houston in the new biopic, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, believes that the “The Voice” will definitely have some feedback about her performance, “I would hope she would be like, ‘OK, Nai, you did a thing!’ Also, she might have loads of notes and I’d just be like, ‘Great — let’s do another one. Direct me and we can do it again.'”
Ackie admits that her interpretation of the legendary singer focuses on portraying Houston as a human being and showing her struggles with fame and addiction in the most respectful way possible, “The thing about Whitney and people who are suffering from addiction is it’s a reminder that it’s an illness, that the person who is going through this is the victim of it. Her life was extraordinary, but the things she was going through were things we all go through.”
“Bringing her into a very human space and treating Whitney with the same compassion we would treat anyone else is really important, because I think when it comes to the idea of celebrities and icons, sometimes we can be more unkind because our expectations of them are so high,” adds the Star Wars actress.
Directed by Kasi Lemmons, the movie also features Stanley Tucci as music executive Clive Davis, Ashton Sanders as Houston’s husband Bobby Brown, and Nafessa Williams as her close friend Robyn Crawford.
Lemmons got the approval of Houston’s family and used her actual vocals for the big musical numbers. She says, “I think she’d be happy with it. I’ve thought about this a lot, of course. I felt like we were having a conversation with Whitney. I asked her a lot, ‘What would you think?’ or ‘Is this OK?’ When we came to a crossroads or a sticking place, it was kind of like, ‘Let’s talk to Whitney about it.”
“I think she would be cool with it, and I think she would want the story told. She would want her humanness told, that she was not just a performer, but she was a mother and she was a daughter and she was a sister and she was a friend and she was a lover and a wife. All of those aspects that make her a full woman, we are including that in the story,” explains Lemmons.
Watch the trailers of I Wanna Dance With Somebody here:
