Taraji P. Henson finally gets her ‘Fatal Attraction’ role
NEW YORK — Tyler Perry says he knew if he was going to have Taraji P. Henson star in his latest film, he would have to work fast.
The writer-director filmed “Tyler Perry’s Acrimony,” his third collaboration with the actress, in a mere eight days.
Perry said it was easier to film the revenge thriller around Henson’s “Empire” shooting schedule because she comes in prepared for a role, and she’s especially good at playing bad characters.
“She’s a director’s dream,” he said at the film’s premiere earlier this week. “She knows exactly what you want. She knows exactly where to go.”
The actress plays a woman who becomes unhinged after being scorned by her ex-husband.
The film, which opened Friday, represented a new challenge for both Perry and Henson.
Henson said she was enticed to the project by Perry’s pitch that it would be her chance to play a character type she’d wanted to play for years.
“We all saw ‘Fatal Attraction,’ right? And as a young actor with dreams, that was always a character I wanted to play,” Henson said. “Whenever you see a great actor portray a role, it’s always on the bucket list to actors. I know for me it was, so that’s the thing that made me sign on because when he called he said this is your Glenn Close in ‘Fatal Attraction’ moment. And I was like, ‘I’m down.’”
The film represented the opportunity for Perry to return to a genre he became fascinated with while filming his role in “Gone Girl,” director David Fincher’s adaptation of the novel.
“After doing ‘Gone Girl,’ I wanted to do a thriller. I wanted to see and show what I learned on that film, and what just pretty much felt like I was in school,” he said.