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Charlie mark.
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- And you're gonna give it to 'em.
- Just watch me.
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{\an8}They call me and they're like,
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{\an8}"Nay, we want you to audition for
this Whitney Houston biopic."
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And I was like,
"Okay, cool, but, like, for what part?"
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And they were like, "Whitney."
And I was like, "Hmm?"
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And you are?
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Whitney Elizabeth Houston.
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{\an8}Naomi Ackie is, I think,
one of the great stars about to break.
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She's a magnificent talent,
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and she just really put in the work.
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{\an8}Clive was one of the first ones to say,
"I really like this girl."
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{\an8}We've all agreed that she's the real deal,
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{\an8}that she's a really strong actress
with enormous depth and skill.
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The last audition where
the producers and director came to London,
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and I'm dressed up like Whitney Houston...
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...and I'm singing "I Will Always Love You"
with the full, like, suit on and the hair,
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there was, like, a moment just
at that point something clicked for me,
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and I was like,
"I understand how I can tell this story."
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{\an8}Naomi is like a revelation to me.
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But I think people are
really gonna know her after this.
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She trained and everything,
but she's just innately talented.
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- You're amazing.
- Thank you.
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It's incredible.
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And it gives you chills.
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{\an8}Being a British actor
coming here to play an American icon
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is always a challenge,
but she does a brilliant job of it.
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She's got her energy.
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She's got a levity and a joie de vivre.
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The interesting thing is
she takes you there
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to such an extent
that you just believe it.
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Part of that is just
how technically perfect she is
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at the music and the voice.
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♪ With somebody who loves me ♪
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There was many different elements.
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How do I prepare myself?
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Vocally, singingwise,
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the accent work took about six months
to get really comfortable with it.
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Rob's gonna come work for me full-time,
as my creative assistant.
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And how do I prepare myself physically?
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You're doing this a lot,
so keep your energy in.
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We're all there in support,
so just holler at us at any time,
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but thank you for coming.
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In terms of movement,
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I worked with my amazing friend
and my movement coach, Polly Bennett,
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and we kind of split it all up.
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{\an8}I was approached about this job
after Bohemian Rhapsody
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and Baz Luhrmann's Elvis Presley biopic.
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Polly does movement character coaching,
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so really trying to capture Whitney
through her body and how she performed
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and how she moved.
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As soon as you start looking at somebody,
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you notice little habits
that come up time and time again.
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Everyone has certain cadences.
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Everyone has, like, an inner rhythm.
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And if you kind of study it
and then practice it enough,
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the hope is
is that it comes out really naturally.
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We're trying to find
the reason why she does the movements.
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And that is gold dust for an actor.
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"A" marker.
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When we meet Whitney in this film,
we meet her at 18, 19 years old.
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She's a church girl.
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♪ Bread of heaven ♪
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And get your eyes off
that damn door, girl.
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- You know what, I quit.
- Oh, no, you don't quit.
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We are told that she has
a little bit of a lazy attitude
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despite having this incredible talent.
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She was kind of the opposite
from the Whitney we saw on TV.
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- I told her to dress up.
- Why?
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These are my nice jeans.
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- Nice jeans?
- Nice jeans?
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She is super chill,
from New Jersey, and she was funny.
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She did silly voices, and I'm very silly.
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For me, that was
an interesting to-and-fro to play.
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You look at her then
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going on television wearing a pretty dress
with a bow in her hair,
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and sort of almost dressed up
a little bit older than her years.
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- How do I look?
- Ridiculous.
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The dynasty of performers
that she comes from--
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her mother, her godmother...
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- Aretha Franklin's like my godmother.
- You dreaming.
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...all of the sort of soul sisters
that she was around,
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she's sort of taking on their persona.
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This is the look they want.
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America's sweetheart.
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The feeling I got from how people
told their stories about Whitney
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left a sense of warmth which helped
to make her feel as present as possible.
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Once I knew enough about Whitney to have
not just admiration for what she gave us
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but who she was as a person,
her journey through the world,
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I mean, you can't not love her.
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We're looking at everything
that makes a performance
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rather than just the movement.
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I've got Whitney interviews from 19 to 25
and then 25 to 35,
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so I could figure out vocal tone
and how it changes over time.
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How was I?
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Great.
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They still love me.
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You can see her vocal training.
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{\an8}You can see remnants
of all of her songs before.
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You see the sort of soul-gospel training
in her body.
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You can see her tremoring her hands,
see her shifting her feet.
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And it's as if she's learnt not to move
while she's singing these songs
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and just rely on her diaphragm
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and just rely on her back
to help conduct the orchestra behind her.
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She is in command of the music
as she's onstage.
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Our imagination had to be evolved,
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and that's where Polly took over
and kind of inserted her research into it
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to be like, "Okay, at this point now,
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gonna move over here,
and then we're gonna do this,
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because I remember in a 1986 performance,
she did that."
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And it was all kind of
jigsaw puzzling it together.
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It was so enjoyable.
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Naomi is incredibly tenacious.
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She's incredibly hardworking,
and she's smart.
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She's always feeding off physical work,
and that's been so inspiring to me.
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Yeah!
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{\an8}Watching Naomi perform and re-create
some of these iconic moments of hers,
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{\an8}it takes me right back to my childhood
where I remember being in front of the TV.
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{\an8}She clearly did her homework
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{\an8}when it comes to how this woman was,
watching how she even moved.
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And you could tell she clearly took it in.
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I was working with
a lot of people who knew Whitney,
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from, like, people in makeup
to her family who were involved.
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Hair and makeup, obviously, is gonna be
important in the Whitney Houston story.
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So, in hiring Tisa,
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she really understood the character
and where we were gonna go with her.
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{\an8}Anything that was in the script
that was documented historically,
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like Soul Train Music Awards or the AMAs,
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that was on that board
so we see what makeup we're gonna do.
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So we're doing everything true and exact.
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Whenever I got the wig on,
I do this happy dance.
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The wigs are kind of their own character
in the Whitney Houston story.
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Everybody knows her hair.
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{\an8}The way the hair fell
on Whitney is right here, for example.
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But if Whitney's bob was a little shorter,
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I might have cut it longer for Naomi,
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just because their face shapes
and sizes are different.
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I just know the end look has to be here.
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The bang has to be
right above her eyebrow.
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I tried to stay spot-on.
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There's so many wigs in the movie.
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And Brian helped create the looks
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and the transformation over decades
of that, visually.
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And what an amazing job.
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There you have it: Whitney Houston.
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I came here with four suitcases
'cause I got some wigs to take.
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With Naomi Ackie's performance,
we're able to get the essence of Whitney.
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I'm so impressed by her ability
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to bring forth
the different personalities of Whitney.
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She is amazing.
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I'm so happy that we made the decision
to have Naomi embody Whitney.
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She is, in two words, simply breathtaking.
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And good night!
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