When a person gives herself a stage nameâand that stage name, of all things, is Queenâyou wonder if youâre ever seeing the real person.
But with her performance as legendary blues entertainer Bessie Smith in HBOâs upcoming biopic, Bessie, Queen Latifah reveals herself in ways those of us who knew her from her various entertainment pursuitsâtalk show host, hip-hop star, Cover Girl, bubbly actress, and LGBT activistânever imagined she was capable.
And sheâs been waiting for over 20 years to do it.
Queen Latifah, nĂ©e Dana Owens, was 22 when she was first asked to play Bessie Smith. Production and development issues meant the project would take decades to finally come to fruition, with HBO producing a script written and directed by Dee Rees, the indie darling with just one other film under her belt: 2011âs gripping coming-of-age story, Pariah.
Itâs worth the wait. Not just because of the story it tells, of a singer whose influence extended from Billie Holliday to Janis Joplin and beyond. But because of the scorched-earth, tumultuous power and even more explosive vulnerability Queen Latifah brings to the role all these years later, now at age 45.
âIâm obviously more mature than when I was a 22-year-old and this first came across my plate,â Latifah says. âIâm much more confident. Iâm much more experienced. Iâve lived more of a life.â
She gazes out the window of the Manhattan hotel room where weâre talking, the day after Bessieâs New York premiere. After a pause: âIâve sort of been on Bessieâs road a little more at this time.â
That road, for most actresses, would be terrifying to navigate. Latifah takes the journey at 100, no seatbelt, no safety net.
Bessie Smith hailed from Chattanooga, Tennessee, raised dirt poor and an orphanâher parents died when she was 9. One scene in Bessie finds young Smith chased around the house at knifepoint by her older sister, wailing for her mother.
It was a long journey from that upbringing to being crowned the Empress of Blues. She joined a dance troupe in 1912, before being taken under the wing of singer Ma Rainey and coming into her own as a solo act with hit versions of âDown Hearted Bluesâ and âBaby Wonât You Please Come On.â
She would become the highest paid entertainer of her day, a status she fought forâhow timelyâby demanding the same fee as male singers and white counterparts.
She married her bodyguard Jack Gee, a relationship plagued by domestic violence and his jealousy over her bisexualityânot to mention by Smithâs own crippling alcohol addiction. Later in life, sheâd become common-law married to an old friend. But her true love, though she could never actually say those words, was a young performer named Lucille, played in the film by Tika Sumpter.
Itâs a film that has Latifah, as she recounts, âjuggling lovers and getting dragged behind trucks and fighting and running up and down stairs and getting stabbed.â She also sings all of Smithâs songs in the filmâin full-voiced, guttural fashion, which you can hear on the already-released Bessie soundtrack.
Itâs, to undersell it, a lot.
âIâm not afraid to tell Bessieâs story truthfully,â Latifah says. âThe good, the bad, the right, the wrong, the sexuality, the family issues, the violence, the love, the hurt, the painâI wasnât afraid to give myself to her story.â
At this point, it develops into a bit of a sermon. âYou have to have courage to do that,â she says. âYou have to be fearless to play Bessie. You canât be a chicken. You canât be a chump. You canât be worried about what everybody thinks. Because if you are, then you canât play Bessie.â
Because of the swiftness with which the film went into production, Latifah had just days between wrapping filming on her since-canceled talk show The Queen Latifah Show and heading to Atlanta for the Bessie shootâa window so short that Latifah almost didnât commit to it. âI really needed a vacation,â she laughs. âBut I had to get this movie done. I had to do it.â
True, the ownership she has over this role transcends the labeling of âpassion project.â It goes much deeper than that.
âYou know how when people say that life is eternal, that the flesh goes away but the spirit just keeps going?â says MoâNique, who plays Ma Rainey in the film. âI believe that the spirit of Bessie Smith kept going in Queen Latifah.â
The script rewrites. The production delays. Repeatedly returning to square one. âItâs the spirit of these people saying itâs just not time,â MoâNique says. âI need you to go through life some more.â
There are certainly two elements of Bessie that are going to grab headlines. One is a lengthy nude scene that takes place roughly two-thirds through the film. âPeople are really into my boobies now,â Latifah says about the attention the scene has already garnered. âI mean, I always thought they were pretty cool,â she laughs.
âItâs in the script. Itâs just part of what it is,â she continues. âIf I honestly had another script come across my desk throughout the years that required that of me, I wouldâve done it if I decided to do that role.â
Still, âthat was a big deal,â says writer-director Dee Rees. âWe closed the set and made it comfortable. I love that she was ready to go there and wanted to tell the whole story. She didnât blink.â
Rees is also referring to the surprising way Latifah charged into the other part of Bessie thatâs likely to be sensationalized: the characterâs bisexuality. Countless words and gossip rag items have been devoted to Latifahâs own sexuality. Gawker has referred to Latifah as being in an âopen closet,â and photos of the star out with her widely presumed girlfriend are now fairly common.
Latifah, who has appeared at pride festivalsâeven telling the crowd she was proud to be âamong her peopleâ in 2012âand officiated the mass all-sexuality-inclusive wedding at the 2014 Grammy Awards, doesnât shy away from any presumptions of her sexuality. But her syntax when talking about the issue is always careful and pointed: she will never talk publicly about her personal life.
So when the conversation turns to how Rees and the film depicts Bessieâs sexualityâbeautifully, we might add, in a very straightforward, this-is-who-she-loved mannerâLatifah puckers on the cough drop sheâs been sucking, fidgeting with lots of âmhmmsâ and ârightsâ and âyeps.â
We talk about the different purposes each relationship, male or female, served in Bessieâs life, and the issues she had with admitting and accepting love. We talk about Reesâs own thoughts about why the portrayal of sexuality in Bessie is progressive, in an age when sexual orientation is often scandalized, particularly in Hollywood biopics.
âI wanted to be true to who the woman was,â Rees says. âAnd I wanted to be matter-of-fact. I think, in fact, in some ways people were freer in terms of their sexuality then than they are now.â
But were there ever any qualms on Latifahâs part to delving into Bessieâs bisexuality, given her adherence to keeping a separation between her personal and public lives? After all, in the wake of playing Bessie, the conversation would undoubtedly turn to her own sexuality, using Bessieâs relationships as an entryway to get her to open up about it.
âThis is what it is,â she says. âYou canât go into a movie with qualms. Otherwise donât do it. You canât judge the character. And you canât change them just because. You gotta deal with your issues in order to play certain characters.â
She talks about how when she starred in 1996âs Set It Off, in which she plays a butch lesbian who attempts a bank robbery gone wrong, she had to process the death of her brother, because she was too numb to even cry when required to in the film.
âYou have to kind of deal with your ish,â she says. âI canât go into this movie thinking, âOK. Iâm riding him in this scene; Iâm kissing her in that scene.â I canât think about it.â
But what about the other people who will be thinking about that for her?
âPeople can say whatever they want,â she says. âPeople will say things either way. Me not playing this role isnât going to make a difference with that.â
âSo Iâm going to have fun and do what I think is right for me at the end of the day, and let people form their own opinions about what they think about it, or what they think about me,â she says. âItâs all well and good. Thatâs their choice. Iâm happy I did it. And Iâll do it again.â
We should hope so. Because sheâs so damn good.