Daughter of Motown singer fulfils destiny
Tracee Ellis Ross opens up about her experience of playing a glamorous artist on the big screen in The High Note
Tracee Ellis Ross can’t dance — at least, not the kind of dancing that requires following choreography in three-inch heels while belting disco-pop into a microphone. She learned this the hard way, preparing for The High Note, a new comedy due for release in Thailand on Thursday. She plays Grace Davis, a superstar singer looking for a refresh; enter her striving personal assistant (Dakota Johnson) who dreams of being a producer.
“I’ve never been more overwhelmed in my life,” Ross said of the dance numbers. She kept asking the choreographers to take it down a notch. “I was like, ‘We’ve been working on this one little move for quite some time now. Should we perhaps vary it and come up with a different move that my body seems to want to bend in the shape of? Because what I’m doing does not look like what you’re doing.’”
In Ross’s vision, Grace is the kind of overthe-top glamster who changes her nail colour for every outfit, feels most at home on stage in a feathery jumpsuit, and demands that her assistant break in her shoes — but has also overcome numerous hurdles as a female artist of colour. Ross loved the part, she said, because for iconic artists, “it’s extremely hard work to make it look as effortless as it seems, and we forget that they have fears and dreams and secrets and hurts and hearts, and all of those things”.
“I feel like Grace Davis was written with all of that already intertwined there,” she said.
Ross knows what you’re thinking: Yes, Grace does bear a resemblance to her own mother, Diana Ross. And no, that didn’t weigh on her. She hardly thought about it herself, she said, except to ask the movie’s hairstylist not to make her ’do too much like her mom’s.
More nerve-racking for Ross was that she was due to make her big-screen singing debut in the film. She worked with a voice coach, studied clips of performers — just how do they wield that mic? — and still felt shaken when it came time to film a big concert scene. “This is not for the faint of heart,” she thought. “You have to put aside your own insecurities and shame and judgment, and just go for it.” It was, she added, “so worth it”.
It’s the first leading movie role for Ross, 47, who spent eight years starring on the series Girlfriends before finding even greater acclaim on Black-ish, the ABC family comedy. She’s now a producer on one of its spinoffs, Mixedish, a prequel for her character (who is based, as an adult, on the wife of Kenya Barris, who created Black-ish). Ross is the rare star whose clout has grown and diversified as she’s matured — she gave a TED Talk in 2018 and started a hair care company, specialising in curls, in 2019.
Her movie, the culmination of a lifelong dream, deals with inequality, sexism, ageism and racism — now, Ross was also grateful that it might be an escape. “The movie is bright and joyful and a feel-good movie,” she said, “that hopefully will offer people a small respite, in the midst of so much heavy stuff.”
Was it always on the table for you to sing in the movie?
Yeah. It was a childhood dream of mine. I don’t know where consciously or unconsciously it kind of got put aside. And it’s also not that I haven’t sung. I sang the opening title song to the show I did on Lifetime in the 90s [The Dish]. I sang in talent shows in high school. I have always wanted to sing, and I also have always really wanted the right movie to come along. Like, if I look back at old vision boards, when I was making vision boards, I had put on there that I wanted to do a musical biopic or a musical on Broadway, and also longing to find the right movie role.
I think I hoped I could sing, too, and until I got into that studio and finally heard myself for the first time, it was all a bit of a ‘who knows?’ Sure, I’ve done some comedic singing, and I’ve done some hosting singing, and I’ve definitely sung in the car and the shower. But me with a microphone in my face — oh my God. So it was purposeful and also magical that this was a special enough role to encourage me to walk through my terror.
You’ve said that during you were surprised that the doors of Hollywood didn’t open wider. Did that change after
Did the movie roles come then? During Girlfriends, not only did the pearly gates of Hollywood not open, it was still locked. I was like, ‘Oh, is there a key? There’s no key? Nothing here? OK. Cool.’
I think once Black-ish started and then particularly once I won the Golden Globe, there was a shift for me. It’s a combination, honestly, of the Golden Globe and the hair company, and realising that some of my biggest, oldest dreams were happening. My manager said, ‘What do you want to be doing? Let’s be purposeful about it. I think you’ve got to dream some new dreams.’ And I was like, ‘Holy moly. I’ve had these dreams for so long! How do you start dreaming new dreams when you’ve had the same ones for so long?’
I went through this realisation of, I’ve spent a lot of years taking what I was given and trying to make it into something that feels good, whether it was really what I wanted or just what I was offered. And realising, if I’m going to do a movie at this point after waiting this long, what kind of movie do I want to do? What’s the right one?
And then this script came along, and it felt like it was sent from heaven. I chased this.
Did you consult on the script?
We all did. First of all, at 47 years old and as outspoken as I am, and with as clear of a point of view as I have about life — particularly about sharing stories and narratives of black women — yes, I spoke up. And it was wonderful working with a director [Nisha Ganatra], a woman of colour, who had a sensitivity, a willingness and openness to dive into areas with care that needed to be looked at.
Our writer, Flora [Greeson] — she has become one of my closest friends — had a real willingness to say, ‘If that snags you, then we really need to take a look at it — like, I’m not a black woman. Let’s get a little crew of us together where we have enough diverse voices here so we can sort this out.’
That’s something I always think when I work, even if it makes people uncomfortable.
A theme in the film is the difficulty of being in the shadow of an iconic artist, and the pressures on a star who is also a parent. Is that something you related to?
I think that was the one place where the idea of being someone’s child — the world doesn’t realise the intricacy of just what that is. I know in the case of my mom, everything in her life is about making it good for her children. Everything she
‘‘The world doesn’t realise the intricacy of being an iconic artist’s child
does is just about, how can she love us more, better and more fully? Diana Ross is one thing, but my mom is an exceptional love. So to think that anything of her job, life, career, gift, any of that would have made it difficult in any way for her children, I think would have devastated her.
Perhaps because I was walking through the singing part of it, it just did not dawn on me that people were going to be like, ‘Is this a story of your mother?’ No. It has nothing to do with it. I didn’t even think about it, guys.