South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Janelle Monae connects the dots in dual ‘Antebellum’ roles
In “Antebellum,” a thriller by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz about the horrors of racism in America, Janelle Monae portrays two women living in different eras in what appear to be vastly different circumstances.
As “Antebellum,” begins, the singer-actress is Eden, an enslaved woman abused by a sadistic plantation owner in the pre-Civil War antebellum South.
Then, in the film’s second act, Monae is Veronica Henley, a successful modern-day Black feminist author and TED-talking cultural influencer with a loving husband and beautiful daughter.
The movie was scheduled to open in theaters in April, but was pushed back and now has a timely release for on-demand viewing at home in the midst of the racial reckoning it aims to address.
Monae is well-established as a prestige projects actress. She had feature roles in “Moonlight” and “Hidden Figures” in 2016, and stars in the new season of Amazon’s “Homecoming” which, like “Antebellum,” explores issues of memory and identity.
Monae said that when she read the script, she was impressed by the job the time-traveling story did “of connecting the dots of the past, present and future.”
“I don’t think we can talk about police brutality or the prison-industrial complex or racial injustice or white supremacy without going back to the origin, which was chattel slavery,” she says.
“People forget and history books often whitewash this, but Black people were forced to be in America to work, and to work for free. They took people with purpose and passion real human beings who had a lot to offer this world who were robbed of that opportunity. And so my job, and what I felt like I had an opportunity to do, was to connect those dots and to tell the truth.”
Renz says that “our only trepidation” about casting Monae “was that she is such a pop star and so recognizable that we didn’t want the audience to not be able to get past that. But she’s so incredible in the roles that didn’t turn out to be an issue.”
The duo became sold on Monae watching her on the Grammy Awards telecast in 2018. In the audience, “she had this incredible stoic look on her face,” Renz recalls. “I don’t know what she was looking at, but there was so much there, happening behind her eyes.”
Monae has another movie coming this month: Julie Taymor’s “The Glorias,” the Gloria Steinem biopic. She plays Ms. magazine co-founder Dorothy Pitman Hughes.
It might seem like she’s chosen acting over making music in 2020, but that’s not the case, she says.
“I’m big on the law of attraction,” she says. “And I feel like when the timing is right, opportunities present themselves. I couldn’t have written down that I was going to be involved in movies that highlight marginalized voices and that center people that haven’t often been portrayed on screen with the nuances of a human being.”
On the contrary, her career choices are “very organic.”
“I kind of go where my soul clap tells me to go. I don’t feel like I’m an artist that is about doing the next job or the next gig to keep money in my pocket. I’ve been broke before and said ‘no.’ I’ve had that mentality if it’s not something that going to make a dent in culture or push conversations forward or challenge me, or make me feel ...”
Monae searches for the right word.
“... Terrified! Almost terrified, about taking these risks and going on this journey as an actor. In Antebellum in particular, I knew that for me to get into this role I really did have to call on my ancestors, and I really did have to meditate. I felt them guiding me every step of the way.”