Posts tagged precious
Gabby Sidibe Precious Interview
Jan 26th
Gabby Sidibe really hit me with her performance in Precious, it’s definitely one of the hardest hitting films I’ve seen in the last few years, if you want to see explosians, slapstick comedy and spaceships this film is not for you. Gabby plays Claireece “Precious” Jones a sixteen-year-old girl born into a life no one would want. She’s pregnant for the second time by her absent father; at home, she must wait hand and foot on her mother (Mo’Nique who also gives a sensational performance), a poisonously angry woman who abuses her emotionally and physically. School is a place of chaos, she’s doing well but she’s living with the secret that she can neither read nor write. Precious is offered the chance to transfer to an alternative school, Each One/Teach One. In the literacy workshop taught by the patient yet firm Ms. Rain (Paula Patton my crush of the month), Precious begins a journey that will lead her from darkness, pain and powerlessness to light, love and self-determination, it’s serious business and hands down one of the most powerful films I’ve seen.
You give terrific performance in Precious, but I understand you had no real aspirations to become actor. You thought it was a dream too far…
Gabby Sidibe: Yes. That makes a lot of sense, a dream too far. I had been told for most of my life that I would never be able to do something like this. Also I got a lot of cues from the media: when it comes to actresses and people the media cares about, you can probably count the girls that look like me on one hand. So I certainly didn’t think I could break any barriers and become an actress.
And even when you got the audition you weren’t convinced?
Gabby Sidibe: No. I wasn’t. I was withholding; on the fence. I thought it was a dumb idea to go in and do the audition because there was no way that I could be an actress. It had never been within my scope and I never auditioned for anything. I wasn’t an actress. I had no training. Nothing. I thought it made more sense that I to go to school. I was a receptionist for a company while I was studying psychology. But somehow or other it ended up with my going to the audition.
Who persuaded you?
Gabby Sidibe: It was partly my mother and also I have a friend, Henry, who is the assistant director in my local theatre. He called me when they were coming to cast and he thought of me, because they were looking for a very specific girl that I look like. After the audition I went straight to work and by the time I got out of the subway, which is literally an hour later, I had the call back.
I heard that you had an amusing phone call when trying to ring them for the call back…
Gabby Sidibe: Yeah, I was still in disbelief, I dialled the wrong number and I got some lawyer office and I was talking to this lawyer and who happened to have the same name as the guy I was meant to be calling. I was like, ‘Can I talk to Billy Hopkins?’ So they put me through to Billy, the lawyer! He was like, ‘What are you looking for?’ And I said, ‘I have just done this audition and I am doing the call back.’ He laughed, and said, ‘I hope they actually gave you the right number!’ I was pretty sure they did, because I was just one number off so he wished me luck. ‘I hope you get it.’ he said. So I called the right number and made an appointment to come in the next day. The callback was the next day and I was called within half an hour of leaving, saying Mr. Daniels wants to see you. He wanted to meet me that day but since I had already gone all the way back home — and I think the office at the time was five blocks away from where the call back was — so they said I made the appointment and went back in the next day and was talking to Lee for about forty five minutes to an hour. The whole time I am waiting to do the audition again because I was told I would have to audition for him, but it never happened. He just gave me the part.
Lee Daniels says that you told him things about the character that he had not considered. Do you remember what?
Gabby Sidibe: Being a fan of the book, anytime they wanted to do something a little different I would get up on a soapbox, saying, ‘No, you can’t do that because they didn’t do that in the book and we can’t change the book.’ I am anal and got very serious about the character. I have probably told him a lot of things just because there are so many layers to Precious and he just thought because she was big and dark skinned that she had to be a certain way. But in meeting me, I am big and I have dark skin but I am certainly better than what he thought of me. He thought I would be not so and certainly I changed his idea of who Precious is, based on the way I am.
What were you thinking during the audition?
Gabby Sidibe: It was the scene where Precious meets Ms Weiss for the first time, the social worker, and I was given about three minutes with it. I hadn’t seen the scene beforehand. For the most part if you have a manager and the manager submits you for the role then they will email you the sides to the audition so you can prepare the night before. But since this was an open casting call I just showed up, no appointment, no nothing. And they had sides available so I was given three minutes with it and I went in and I did it. I remember thinking that it was a complete waste of time. Billy Hopkins was in the room with his assistant director Jessica Kelly and I wasn’t nervous at all, because I was feeling pretty stupid for having cut class and I was wondering about what I was missing. That was pretty much all that was on my mind. I wasn’t nervous at all because I didn’t think I had it all; I thought that I had zero chance of actually getting the part.
There are many layers to character and some very harrowing scenes to film…
Gabby Sidibe: I tend to disappear when I am acting as Precious. I am blank, completely, I am just feeling every emotion as Precious would feel it and how she should feel it. I leave my body and I take on this character. It is such a weird thing to describe because at first you do a certain amount of takes for every scene, sometimes more than others and for each time it is all brand new information and it a real revelation. It never grows cold or dead to me.
Precious dreams about the red carpet in the movie. How are you finding it yourself?
Gabby Sidibe: Red carpets are more fun in the film. Photoshoots are more fun in life. That’s the way you split that. Red carpets. They don’t suck but they are actually more fun to film than to actually do. Photoshoots are really awesome because sometimes they give you the clothes you are wearing. They give you free shoes and stuff like that!
PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL “PUSH” BY SAPPHIRE is released in cinemas across the UK on 29th January 2010
Lee Daniels Precious Interview
Jan 23rd
Lee Daniels is a critically acclaimed Director and Producer, he has produced the Academy Award Winning Monsters Ball, The Woodsman and Tennessee. Daniels made his directorial debut with 2006’s Shadowboxer, starring Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire is his second directorial outing…
Set in 1987, it is the story of Claireece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), a sixteen-year-old girl born into a life no one would want. She’s pregnant for the second time by her absent father; at home, she must wait hand and foot on her mother (Mo’Nique), a poisonously angry woman who abuses her emotionally and physically. School is a place of chaos, and Precious has reached the ninth grade with good marks and an awful secret: she can neither read nor write. Precious is offered the chance to transfer to an alternative school, Each One/Teach One. In the literacy workshop taught by the patient yet firm Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), Precious begins a journey that will lead her from darkness, pain and powerlessness to light, love and self-determination.
Initially, the author, Sapphire, was against a film adaptation. Yet you won her over.
Lee Daniels: Love her. Love her for that. It took me nine, probably ten, years to stalk her. I have stalked her for ten years. Sapphire is a scholar. She is a genius. She is a poet. She is an intellect beyond belief. She doesn’t give a fuck about Hollywood. She don’t care about it, just doesn’t. It is about literature and I think that Lady Luck must have been on my side because she finally embraced the idea. I think that even if I did a bad movie, it would not affect her brilliant masterpiece and I think that she saw the difference in both. She finally realised it and I was there the right time stalking her.
Do you know why she changed her mind? Did she see one of your other films maybe?
Lee Daniels: I think it was a combination of things, but I think she saw Shadowboxer and she really thought I could bring something to the world that she created and she is very excited that I am doing it.
Did she come to the film set?
Lee Daniels: She came down once or twice. I think she had to watch some of what I was doing because I am dealing with her very profound book. She laughed at something that only Mo’Nique and I thought was funny and she was laughing with us because she got it. She understood that there is humour and that she was still the creator. There was a moment when Mo’Nique was laughing at something and I was laughing at something and Sapphire was laughing at something and we realised that nobody else was laughing but us and that we were on another plane. It was a surreal moment.
What was the moment?
Lee Daniels: It was the scene when the mother tells Precious about the HIV. Precious says, ‘Do you have it?’ And the mother says ‘No.’ And Precious says, ‘How do you know?’ And the mother says, ‘Because we didn’t do it up in the ass!’ No one else thought that was funny. I don’t think it was funny but it was this brilliant delivery of it. I think we were laughing at the execution. It was exactly how Sapphire wrote it in the book so there was this triangle of understanding between Mo’Nique, Sapphire and myself.
It is a tough film but also a very tough book. You have had to soften the delivery a little bit, and add a few more rays of light…
Lee Daniels: A little bit!! A lot of a bit. If I had done the book it would have been X-rated. Not that I have a problem with doing X-rated films. I haven’t yet. But this would have lost an audience. I think that the audience should be entitled to breathe. I think with the book, if it gets too much, emotionally, you can put it down. It affected me so that I had to stop. I had to digest it. I put it down and picked it up again later on and I think that the sequences and the touches of humour that we put in the script really do it justice. Geoffrey Fletcher really did a marvellous job translating this book, this script, and we just took it to another place on the screen. We had to let the audience breathe. If you’ve read that book you will know what I am talking about.
You’ve said that you knew people who were moments away from being characters in this story. From where in your life do you know these people?
Lee Daniels: I knew these people when I was a kid. I knew these people as an adult. I know these people now. As a 50-year-old man, there are Precious, there are Marys. These are real life people to me. Everybody in that movie is someone that I have known. And I find it surprising that people don’t know them. I know that if you live in New York City there is no way you don’t see Precious. And I often see Mary. I am down in the grocery store and I am watching mothers yank on their kids, and just really fuming at them, with a cigarette dangling from their mouth. It doesn’t matter if they’re black, Puerto Rican, white or Chinese. Each woman exists.
Was the character of Mary the hardest to cast? She needs to be very complex, almost macabre, yet able to show that she did have something good inside her once.
Lee Daniels: Mary is a very complex person and she was the first person that I did cast. Mo’Nique is my best friend; a very, very good friend and I speak to her every day. I like working with friends. Mariah Carey is another. Gabby has become a good friend. I like working with friends because I know they have my back and we have such a tight budgetary parameter in dealing with the film that you have to count on friendships to take you through those barriers. It is a difficult journey. With regards to Mo’Nique what we did, only friends can do. It went beyond the director-actor friendship; she really understands me. Mo’Nique understands me in my primal place and we just talked about her. And we talked about me. We talked about my insecurities, paranoia, hopes and dreams and sex life, and what I love poetry-wise and what literature I like. And then she sort of broke down and then we transcended all that shit that she knew that I wanted into her interpretation of Mary. It was volatile, explosive, a magical moment, for me. I expected everything that she gave me. I was not surprised by a syllable.
On that point, you’ve been very brave in talking about the abuse you suffered as a child. That’s reflected specifically in the movie, right, with Precious’ dream sequences?
Lee Daniels: I was never sexually abused, but I was physically abused at home. And when bad things happened to me or I saw bad things happen, I would fantasize. When I was 12, I saw someone killed. I remember very clearly that I went into a bubble and I became a prince in a silver crown, knighting someone with my sceptre. I just dropped into a place right there, so I wouldn’t feel the pain. My imagination was God’s way of protecting me and keeping me sane, and I think we catch that in the movie, yes.
When did you first decide that you wanted to direct films, as well as produce them?
Lee Daniels: I started directing theatre. That’s how it started. I was in theatre early on and I moved. The camera was an animal to me that scared me but I learned about that while I was managing actors, and while I was producing films. Because of that, actors have always been in my comfort zone. My whole thing to begin with in the entertainment industry was media and managing actors throughout the world and being on sets and studying. I was always studying the process of filmmaking through filmmakers and through cinematographers and through production designers etc etc. So that whole experience was learned not through your conventional way
Finally, what was the most important thing that you wanted to convey with this film?
Lee Daniels: That never again should we look at Precious and not look at Precious. When you stumble across this girl you will acknowledge her. Because I have cousins that are her, friends that are her and even having friends and cousins that are her, I still disassociate myself. It is so important for me that I embrace this girl with all my gusto, because she is embracing me. The other important part of this story is about learning to love yourself, and accepting who you are. Those are the two big points I hope people will walk away with from this film. Who knows if they will? But I pray to God that they do.
PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL “PUSH” BY SAPPHIRE is released in cinemas across the UK on 29th January 2010