JENNIFER HUDSON
The Oscar-winner on earning Respect and her memories of Cats.
Personally selected by Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, Jennifer Hudson fulfils another career ambition playing Franklin in the upcoming biopic Respect. Total Film meets the Oscar and Grammy-winning singer/actor/producer to talk about that terrifying honour, emerging from Cats unscathed, and her dream Disney role.
it had always been Jennifer Hudson’s dream to play Aretha Franklin on screen. By some crazy coincidence, the Queen of Soul had decided the actress would be the perfect choice to portray her in a planned biopic. While the former American Idol contestant was performing in a Broadway production of The Color Purple, she got a call from the music legend. “She said, ‘I’ve made my decision. It is you, young lady. I want you to play me,’” Hudson recalls to Total Film over Zoom from LA. Somehow, the stars had aligned.
Hudson’s long-gestating journey to becoming Franklin in Respect first started in 2007, soon after she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her first-ever acting role in the lavish musical Dreamgirls. They met in New York to talk about the project, Hudson shy and nervous as she sat in front of one of her music heroes. But it would be another nine years until the she would receive that fateful call announcing that she had finally snagged the part.
The pair quickly became friends and would speak every week until Franklin’s death at the age of 76 from pancreatic cancer in 2018. The soul star would often launch into colourful stories from her past during these sprawling conversations with Hudson, who had unwittingly found herself a mentor of sorts. “I feel as though she taught me about life by teaching me about her life,” the 39-year-old reveals.
Respect, named after Franklin’s most famous hit, is a rousing depiction of the singer’s life and the hardships she endured on the road to fame. It follows her stratospheric rise as she struggles through a traumatic childhood and troubled marriage to become a global superstar and one of the best-selling artists of all time.
Hudson, who also served as executive producer, had to brace herself for the weighty responsibility of portraying such an iconic and much-loved musician. “It’s the greatest honour, and at the same time, it’s scary,” she says, her voice hushed in reverence. “While filming I had to calm myself [by saying], ‘If Aretha says I can do this, then I can do it.’ Because you can’t just get up one day and be, ‘I’m gonna be Aretha Franklin.’ No, it don’t work like that, you know? My only goal is to make her proud. If she says she wants me to play her, it must be something within me that she sees.”
Off-camera, the film also puts Black female talent front and centre, with Liesl Tommy, who had previously directed episodes of Jessica Jones and The Walking Dead, at the helm, directing a script co-written by Tracey Scott Wilson. Hudson says this is only “befitting” for a story about one of the music world’s “most powerful women”. “That’s definitely something she would have wanted,” she adds.
To prepare for the role, the actress learned how to play the piano six months before shooting, as well as working closely with voice and movement coaches. “I’m gonna forever be in Aretha School,” she declares, ever the diligent student. “I’m gonna learn as much as I can because I’m a fan first.”
When it came to replicating Franklin’s unmistakable voice, the one that won her 18 Grammy Awards and earned her the label of one of America’s greatest singers (not to mention that Queen of Soul moniker), Hudson wanted to create her own homage. “It’s her influence through me, more so than trying to imitate her voice, by using her techniques, how she sings and blending the sounds,” she explains. “Aretha sang from the top of her head, whereas I sing from the back of mine, so I needed to approach it the way she would approach it. You get her nuances versus a complete imitation.”
She was also eager for there to be an air of authenticity when it came to the singing scenes as she belted out classics like ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’, ‘Think’ and, of course, ‘Respect’, the Otis Redding cover that Franklin turned into a joyous feminist anthem. “The way she experienced it in life, I wanted to experience it as an actress in the film. If it was ‘Amazing Grace’ in church, she’s singing live, so, OK, I’m gonna sing this live. If it was a radio record, OK, we record it like a radio record.”
While those scenes may have come easy to someone who has been praised for their own powerful vocal range, the biggest obstacle for Hudson was getting to grips with the lack of agency and power women had when Franklin was emerging as an artist in the ’60s. Controlling men dominated the singer’s life, including her fearsome father, the famed preacher and civil rights activist, C.L. Franklin (Forest Whitaker), and her reportedly abusive first husband, Ted White (Marlon Wayans).
“I was born in 1981, which is a completely different time from when Aretha was born,” she says. “In our day, as women, we are allowed to have space, we are allowed to have an opinion, we’re allowed to own our own power. Whereas back then, they weren’t allowed to be expressive. Men took care of everything.
“So it’s like, ‘OK, I have to go back in time and see what she grew up around. What was it like for women? What was it like to be Black? What was it like to be a mother? What was it like to be an artist?’ She wasn’t allowed to speak her mind as much. So everything was very subtle, very quiet. That was a challenge because I’m a very outspoken person. I’m gonna say how I feel. I’m not gonna think twice about it.”
Hudson’s career trajectory has been similarly dramatic. A contestant in the third season of American Idol in 2004 (shockingly she only placed seventh), as a singer, Hudson has gone on to enjoy a wildly successful music career with two Grammys to her name. She also acted as a judge on both the UK and US versions of The Voice. After making her acting debut in Dreamgirls – beating hundreds of other actresses to win the part of Effie White – other film and TV roles soon followed in the first Sex And The City movie, Empire, The Secret Life Of Bees, Winnie Mandela and Black Nativity.
Some gave her the chance to showcase her remarkable musical prowess while others, like Monster, a harrowing legal drama released earlier this year on Netflix, have allowed her
"Aretha taught me about life"
to branch out with purely dramatic performances. But it’s hard to escape her singing background. “Everybody wants me to sing. Even when I do commercials, they’ll be like, ‘Sing!’ Which is why it’s taken so long for me to come out with an album because I’m always singing for everything I do.”
Her Academy Award, which made her the youngest African-American actor to win an Oscar (she was 25 at the time), takes pride of place in the middle of a heaving awards wall she has at home in Chicago. Every once in a while, she’ll go stare at it. “It never really sinks in,” she admits. “I had never even thought of acting so I didn’t know anything of the acting world, let alone awards or to be nominated for one. I remember Jamie Foxx [her Dreamgirls co-star] saying, ‘She has no clue what was going on.’ And I didn’t! The pandemic is the first time I’ve been able to slow down and be like, ‘Well, how did I get here?’ Really process stuff.”
But while Hudson has experienced the giddy heights of success, her career has not escaped the whiff of the odd stinker. The actress appeared in director Tom Hooper’s 2019 adaptation of Cats alongside Judi Dench, Idris Elba and Ian McKellen. The popular Andrew Lloyd Webber musical was transformed into a fantastical CGI fever dream that featured cats with breasts and tap-dancing cockroaches. It bombed spectacularly at the box office and was one of the worst reviewed films of that year. Hudson’s show-stopping performance of ‘Memory’ was one of the few bright spots that received praise from critics.
What did she make of the apoplectic reaction to the film? “I loved that you asked about Cats!” she starts off by saying. “You know what? I think it was a bit overwhelming. It’s unfortunate that it was misunderstood. I think later down the line, people will see it differently. But it is something
I am still very proud of and grateful to have been a part of. Yeah, I got to be Grizabella the Glamour Cat!” In fact, she loved the experience so much, she got two cats of her own, naming one after her character and the other one after Macavity, Elba’s resplendent teleporting feline. “They are the best thing I’ve ever had. I love them so much.”
Hudson will be returning to the cuddly world of animals with her next project, Pierre The Pigeon-Hawk, a starstudded animation featuring will.i.am, Snoop Dogg, Whoopi Goldberg, Kenan Thompson and Ashlee Simpson. The singer will be voicing the owl Ophelia, and she’s already had a special request. “My family are like, ‘Jennifer, please don’t go get an owl!’” she laughs. She will also be appearing in Tell It Like A Woman, a female-led anthology film, in a segment that will be directed by Taraji P. Henson, her Empire castmate.
As thrilled as she is about these upcoming roles, there’s still one part she’s dying to land. “I’m waiting for my Disney movie!” she says before laying out her impeccable credentials. “Fun fact! I used to work on the Disney Wonder cruise ship. I was Calliope, the head muse, in Hercules: The Musical. They are getting ready to make the movie. Well, I am good and ready to be Calliope.”
Hudson briefly breaks into song as proof, and there it is, that incandescent voice with its soul-stirring power to melt all your troubles away. “To play Aretha was my dream. Now I’ve done this, I have to have new dreams. I already know my lines!” But will the stars align again? Time to work your magic, Disney…
RESPECT OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 10 SEPTEMBER.