Dreamgirls The Star Interviews - page 2

26-04-2007 21:05

As for you Anika, you have a long experience of performing on stage - was it very different to be doing a movie musical

Rose:

"I actually didn’t approach it any differently than I approach stage. I think that as an actor you find your way to that character and you create that character from the inside out. The script was written so well and Bill made such a comfortable environment that the oddest thing for me was dealing with the fact that things are not happening chronologically as they do on stage. You get there at 5 o’clock in the morning and you’re 17 years old, you have lunch when you’re 25, you have a snack at 19. So I made sure that on my script above each scene I wrote the year and the age that I was so that I wasn’t becoming schizophrenic about it."

Danny, you don’t get to sing, was that a source of regret

Glover:

"I’ve always been a closet introvert. There’s a part of me that still thinks he’s Smokey Robinson and that he has the moves of The Temptations, but that’s alright."

Jennifer you’ve broken through to a new level with this film, is this some sort of dream come true for you

Hudson:

"Yes, it is. I never would have guessed two years ago this time that I would be here in this way. This is all very new to me. I’ve been singing my whole life, so this is a great thing for me to be a part of."

You’ve come so far so fast, was acting even an ambition when you started out?

Hudson: "Acting never occurred to me until I got the call to come out and audition for this role. Back then I was just singing. I did participate in school plays but I would always just do the solo number. But once the acting came about I fell in love with it and it’s something that I want to continue to do."

You’ve said many times that your grandmother is your inspiration Jennifer, can you tell us about her

Hudson:

"She was my biggest musical influence, though she chose not to turn professional as a singer. She said she just wanted to sing in the church for the Lord and I feel that’s why they say I have her voice. So I attribute all of this to her, to her memory. I hope she’s proud."

Eddie Murphy’s performance in the film will surprise many, was it hard to persuade him to take on a dramatic role like this

Rose:

"I can say that one thing about Eddie is that he really is a beautiful person with a wonderful spirit. I think that what people don’t know is that he is very still and very subdued and shy. So you’re not working with somebody who is constantly on. You’re working with somebody who, when they say ‘action’ is giving the most amazing performance and is so totally open that you have a wonderful electricity working between you, and that is constant with him. He’s not the type of person that you’re like: ‘oh please, just shut up so we can do the scene, please don’t make me laugh again’. He’s just not like that."

Eddie was a fan of this show, wasn’t he

Condon:

"Right from the beginning he’d seen Dreamgirls four times, so this was something that he was interested in doing and I think he felt it was something he wanted to live up to. The first people he was interested in as musicians were James Brown and Otis Redding, so he felt like this was his music too. He was very excited about doing this movie."

What research did you do for the role, Jennifer

?

Hudson:

"I looked at [Supremes singer] Florence Ballard, but I feel that Effie’s story and I guess the Dreamgirls story in itself is a bit of everybody’s story in the industry. As far as the music, I would say I looked at Aretha Franklin, at Whitney Houston and [original Dreamgirls star] Jennifer Holliday. I tried to pay tribute to all the great female vocalists in almost every song that I did."

Diana Ross was reportedly unhappy when this film was announced, how does she feel about it now

Condon:

"I worked with Rob Marshall on Chicago, and last year right before we started shooting Dreamgirls I went to the premiere of his film Memoirs Of A Geisha. I was sitting there and Diana Ross sits down in front of me, I watched the entire movie through her hair......I was so tempted to reach forward and ask her myself. But you know, the fact is this is not her story. I think she went on the David Letterman show and said that she hadn’t seen Dreamgirls, but she was going to see it with her lawyers. But that was her joke. Dreamgirls was always a highly fictionalised version of real events."

Jennifer, has your old friend Simon Cowell offered you any guidance since this success has come your way

Hudson:

"If you want to consider what Simon gives as guidance, I don’t know.... I think I’ve been blessed. I think to be able to sit back and watch my castmates has been a source of guidance for me. I take them as a lesson and just try to learn from them all."

The showstopper in the story is Jennifer singing And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going - how was that to do

Hudson:

"It was something that I felt I really needed to focus in on. At the time I felt it was my biggest responsibility, I just tried my best to live in that moment and to tell that story that so desperately needed to be told."

Condon:

"We pre-recorded all the songs. Jennifer went in a few times and the last time was three weeks before we actually did the scene. But Jennifer sang every time. We must have done it 65 times or so, but she sang every take full out so her voice was gone after three of four hours. We’d planned to do it over two days but when the voice was gone she couldn’t pretend, it had to be coming from deep inside. So we actually had to scramble and ask for a lot more money so that we could continue through the week, because it became clear that was the way it was going to happen."

Did Beyoncé need much persuading to take on her role in the film

Condon:

"Beyoncé came to us, we met, I loved her but I still had a couple of question marks. One was that this was a level of acting she’d never attempted before. But more than that, she’s someone who’s got such a well developed stage persona, could she adapt to something that was so really different? Just take the way she is sexually on a stage, she’s so powerful and so contemporary. This was all about something very different, it was about withholding and it was about a certain kind of 60s sexuality. So she volunteered to audition and we worked together on the hardest scene in the movie."

She auditioned

Condon:

"She did a screen test. I called up [co-producer] David Geffen on the way back to the airport and said ‘she’s it’, it was very clear. We didn’t see anybody else. She really wanted the part. She went to Bergdorfs the night before and found this incredible form fitting kind of Marilyn Monroe dress. That was the thing that was clever, you’d think she’d do Diana Ross. She had a little bit of that, but she had a lot of Marilyn, she understood that [her character] Deena at that point was going to try to imitate the white sex goddess of the period. It was really very inventive, her audition."

Jennifer, was it more nerve wracking making this film or appearing on American Idol,

Hudson:

"I think because Idol was first I would have to say Idol because it helped prepare me for this. I walked away with the feeling that if I could get through American Idol I could get through anything. The way they get you on that stage and judge you and devour you, if I can stand that and still survive then I know I can get through this. It can’t be worse."

What research did you undertake for your character Danny, is he based on anyone in particular

Glover:

"Not really. I think that Marty is an amalgamation of many guys. Bill, in the narrative gave me some clear outlines, some places to go. If you place Marty in some sort of historical context in terms he would have managed people like Little Richard or Chuck Berry or the other people who preceded them. Remember the wonderful scene that I had with Ken Page, where we talked about Billie Holiday? You got all those little clues as to what kind of culture he comes out of, what he’s had to endure and who he’s had to be to make sure that his main person, his client, his Jimmy, didn’t have to endure it in the same way."