Naomi Ackie was little-known in the US when she was tapped for a role asJannah in JJ Abrams’s 2019 saga capper Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
But the pressure and intense fanfare that comes with joining the Star Wars_universe could only partly prepare the 30-year-old London native for herlatest high profile role: playing the beloved late pop star Whitney Houston inthe new biopic _I Wanna Dance With Somebody .
“In some ways [it did], knowing that you are entering into something that alot of people have a sense of ownership about and a huge love for.Absolutely,” Ackie tells Yahoo Entertainment in a recent interview. “But italso felt very different… It felt like quite a solitary journey at times, eventhough I had a huge amount of help from everyone.”
Ackie, who has also appeared in Doctor Who and The End of the F — kingWorld was no doubt daunted by the role, which required her to sing live onset, even if her vocals were eventually replaced by Houston’s recordings.
“It’s a journey,” she says. “And I think when I got the part and knew I wasstarting a portion of my life and dedicating a portion of my life to Whitney,I just had to hold onto faith that if I worked hard and I chipped away at thethings I know I needed to do to tell this story, that the end result would besomething that people would enjoy and be touched by.”
Directed by Kasi Lemmons ( Eve ‘s Bayou, Harriet) and written by AnthonyMcCarten ( Bohemian Rhapsody ), the film follows Houston from her discoveryby Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci) at her mother’s lounge show in Newark, NJ toher ascent to global superstardom to her tumultuous relationship with husbandBobby Brown (Ashton Sanders) to her battles with drugs and ultimately hertragic death in 2012 at the age of only 48.
But one aspect of her story — and throughline in I Wanna Dance With Somebody— that’s certain to get renewed attention with the release of the film isHouston’s relationship with her best friend, longtime assistant, and at onepoint, lover, Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams).
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Whitney and Robyn meet-cute at a park in the film’s opening minutes, move intogether and are in a romantic relationship until the newly-signed singer’scareer starts to take off and her father-manager (Clarke Peters) insists sheonly see men.
Naomi Ackie as Whitney Houston I Wanna Dance With Somebody. (Photo: Sony)
While in real life Houston never publicly discussed the same-sex relationshipwhen she was alive, Crawford revealed intimate details surrounding it in her2019 memoir A Song for You: My Life With Whitney Houston. Brown has alsoconfirmed it in more recent years. But gossip about the nature of Houston andCrawford’s relationship, especially earlier in their lives, circulated fordecades.
“It’s something that I gotta say as a young actor in New York City and kind ofin the Black showbiz circuit, we all knew about,” says Lemmons, who appearedin movies like School Daza (1988) and candy man (1992) before pursuingfilmmaking herself. “We didn’t know because we weren’t inside the room, but weall speculated about Robyn. In her life she was obviously somebody who wasvery close to her.
“But in talking to people that knew her [for the film], it was obvious thatthis was actually a very significant relationship. It was a friendship thatwent on for decades. And we had to find a way to honor it and to be truthfulto it. Honestly, I think it’s important because there was a lot of pressure[on Houston] from the outside world to conform to expectations. I think thatput pressure on their relationship and you have to ask yourself, what itwould’ve been like if they didn’t have that pressure? What would’ve happenedto them?”
Some people who knew the “How Will I Know” and “I Will Always Love You”hitmaker, like one of her longtime songwriters, Diane Warren, have said thatthey believe Houston would still be alive today had she continued herrelationship with Crawford.
“I was really young, so I remember hearing whispers, but not even really oldenough to really understand what people were whispering about,” says Williams( Black Lightning ), who plays Crawford in the film but has not yet met her.“So I think to now know the truth and it now being exposed or discovered orshared in this film, I just was really excited for Robyn to be able to live inher truth and be able to do it out loud.
“They meant a lot to each other, and it was a touchy, sensitive area. She losta friend, and I believe they were soulmates and still are. So I just wanted toapproach it really carefully and represent Robyn in the best light that Icould.”
For Ackie, it was important to her that Houston’s estate was involved in theproject.
“When I read the script, I was so happy to see that Robyn was included,because it’s a huge part of her life,” Ackie says. “You can’t tell WhitneyHouston’s story without Robyn Crawford. They were friends and more, and what Ithink is so beautiful about their relationship is they morph from one thing toanother, and they never put a label on it. And so, in a sense, we can’t reallyput a label on it. But what they did have was a deep love for each other. Andto show that love, that she was loved in that way by Robyn is a beautifulthing to show.”