Whitney Houston biopic star Naomi Ackie on family’s reaction
Naomi Ackie, star of I Wanna Dance With Somebody, tells what happened when she met the late superstar’s loved ones.
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When British actor Naomi Ackie is having a “karaoke moment”, there’s one Whitney Houston song – without fail – that she always turns to.
“It’s so cheesy because it’s the title of our film, but I Wanna Dance With Somebody is a CLASSIC!” Ackie laughs from New York, where she’s chatting to SMARTdaily via video link.
“At karaoke, or at a bar or at a club … when it comes on, and the key change happens, that’s a classic song, right there. I dare anyone not to sing or dance to it – it’s a banger.”
Unsurprisingly, it was “a dream come true” for the British actor when she was cast as Houston in the big screen biopic of the brilliant yet troubled star.
Ackie, who broke out in films such as Lady Macbeth and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, concedes that taking on the role of Houston – her first major lead in a film – was daunting.
“Daunted was a big one for me,” she laughs.
“Excited? Yes. Full of anticipation? For sure. I remember my sister saying to me, ‘How do you feel?’ and I said, ‘I feel like I’m a baby looking up at a mountain and I know I can get on to the other side, and all I can do is take one step at a time’.
“It didn’t feel insurmountable, but it definitely felt like a journey – and that’s what it was.”
Ackie spent eight months preparing to play Houston before a single scene was shot.
“I think I had the right instinct about it because it’s not like you just watch a few YouTube videos and you’re like, ‘Right, I’ve got it!’” she laughs.
“It was just chipping away, day by day, and sometimes you’re not very good and sometimes you are, and then sometimes you’re mediocre and that’s really annoying.”
The lifelong Londoner says she worked with three vocal coaches to get the very American Houston’s breathy speaking voice just right (“from the ages of 19 to 48, her voice changed so we worked a lot on that”), while she also studied Houston’s body language and dance style with a movement coach.
Ackie, who has a gorgeous singing voice of her own, didn’t do her own vocals in the film, given the difficulties in replicating Houston’s staggering mezzosoprano range.
“The only person who can sing like Whitney Houston was Whitney Houston, let’s face it,” Ackie’s co-star Stanley Tucci, who plays music mogul Clive Davis, told Entertainment Tonight in the US.
“But [Naomi] has a beautiful voice herself, so she’s singing these songs along with the playback and it gives you chills.”
The film was authorised by the Houston family (Houston’s sister-in-law, Pat Houston, serves an executive producer, as does the man who discovered the star, Clive Davis), so the filmmakers were given carte blanche to use any of Houston’s music for the movie, which gives it an emotional heft.
Ackie says the family, particularly Pat Houston, were all “incredibly supportive”.
“They had a lot to say. They would speak to me about Whitney’s lasting impression on them – stories they thought would help me understand her better. There were some moments where I was very much pinching myself,” Ackie continues.
“I got to meet Whitney’s brother, Gary Houston, and give him a hug and say thank you for allowing me to do this, and to give him love for his sister, and that meant a lot to me.”
Directed by Kasi Lemmons (Harriet) and written by Anthony McCarten, who also wrote the script for Bohemian Rhapsody (which nabbed Rami Malek an Oscar for his portrayal as Queen’s Freddie Mercury), the biopic traces Houston’s life from her upbringing in New Jersey, where she performed with her mother, Cissy Houston, an established gospel and soul singer, through her rise to fame, her tumultuous relationship with husband Bobby Brown, her well-publicised battle with drugs, and her untimely death from a drug-induced drowning in 2012 at just 48.
The 30-year-old Ackie was too young to remember Houston’s mid-1980s-early 1990s peak, and she says she can’t remember the more troubling moments of the star’s life, either.
“I don’t remember when Whitney was going through the harder periods of her life. I don’t remember seeing any of that, I was a bit too young,” she remembers.
“But I have loads of friends who refer to her as ‘Aunty Whitney’ – she feels familial and like home to us,” explains Ackie.
“I know that there are songs in her repertoire that are for every moment, every mood, every emotion – there’s a song for that,” she laughs.
“I think it’s strange to get up close to someone that you’ve thought you’ve known all these years but had never met. It’s quite odd, but my relationship to her was one of admiration and kind of like, ‘Wow, how does she do that?’”
The film doesn’t shy away from Houston’s struggle with drugs, nor does it paper over the singer’s relationship with lover-turned-best friend, Robyn Crawford, a storyline that’s been all too absent from any conversation surrounding Houston over the years. (Crawford’s 2019 memoir, A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston, finally brought the former couple’s relationship into the spotlight.)
And in the film, it is Crawford (played by Nafessa Williams) – along with Davis – who comes across as being one of the few people who genuinely had Houston’s back, even if they couldn’t save her.
Watching the film, it does make one wonder if Houston had been coming through today, whether the world would have been a bit kinder to her in allowing her to be more open about her sexuality.
Ackie isn’t sure.
“My honest answer is I don’t know, because I’m not part of the music industry,” she says.
“I don’t really know what the pressures are now that musicians are having to contend with. I would like to think she would have had an easier time but, then again, I think about actors and musicians now, and young people having to deal with social media, and I’m not so sure. We’ve got a magnifying glass on society issue going on here so I’m not too sure,” she laughs.
“I do know that for the time she was around, and the things she was doing and the boundaries she was pushing in terms of her music, in terms of her relationships with her family and her friends, she was a pioneer. She was doing a lot of things that allow a lot of musicians and actors who are working today to be able to do what we do.”
The future certainly looks bright for Ackie. She’s currently filming Zoe Kravitz’s directorial debut, Pussy Island, alongside Channing Tatum and she’s just wrapped production on Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17, where she stars alongside Toni Collette.
Working opposite the Australian star was a bucket list moment for Ackie.
“I love Toni,” Ackie says, giddily.
“But I saved telling her that until the last day that we were working together. I said to her, ‘I just wanted to say that I’ve been watching your career since I was a kid, and it just made me want to be an actor like you and to have a career like yours’. I just love her!
“Oh God,” continues Ackie with a generous laugh.
“I hope I didn’t scare her!”
Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody is in cinemas on Boxing Day
Originally published as Whitney Houston biopic star Naomi Ackie on family’s reaction
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