I revel in being the character—so much more than being the superstar. I do not wish ever to be that actress who has a great personality and is comfortable in her skin but portrays her own personality over and over again on film. Those kinds of actors never disappear in a scene. When it comes to my work, I refuse to be Taraji in makeup.
Of course, making a character iconic requires more than just my commitment as an actress; the magic comes, too, in the collaboration with the director. As the captain of the ship, he or she has to steer the production, but we must trust each other’s choices to make that magic possible. To be an actress is to give your insides—your beating heart, your gut, your soul—to another artist, trusting that he or she will protect it and make it look its best. I have to trust the vision. The chemistry has to be on point. There needs to be a certain kind of connection, the kind that is so attuned that I can tell just by the way the director yells “Cut!” whether we’ll be doing another take or if I delivered exactly what he or she needed to fill in the most perfect picture.
I enjoyed this type of relationship with the director Craig Brewer, with whom I partnered to create the most perfect Shug in Hustle & Flow. I knew we had her when we collaborated on the scene in which my character walks nervously into her man’s makeshift studio and sings the hook on his rap single, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.” When we filmed the part of the scene in which DJay plays back Shug’s vocals for everyone in the room, it was my instinct to have Shug listen to the music while rocking and nervous and then freeze when she hears her own voice. Shug literally stops breathing and sits there gape-jawed, shocked at the sound flowing from the speakers.
“Cut—we got it!” Craig said after capturing the moment. After a beat, he considered what we’d done and decided he needed more. “You know what? This time, put your hand over your mouth when you hear your voice.”
“Okay,” I said, knowing exactly where he was going with it, without his having to waste even another word explaining. What Craig was looking for was what I’d committed to: portraying Shug as a woman who was smothered, with neither voice nor power in her circumstances. Covering Shug’s mouth, then, was about Shug needing to stifle the words, as though she were saying, “Oh my God, that came out of my mouth!” We needed to portray not only her surprise, but also her disbelief in her contribution, and her delight and her pride in doing something that had value. This is to say that the director had an idea, and Shug, in all her innocence and fear in the moment, told me why she was doing it. In covering her mouth, she was amplifying her voice.
It was an incredible collaboration—not just with Craig, but, ultimately, with the audience as well, who understood Shug as much more than just some hood rat with a decent voice. Shug, along with Yvette, Benjamin Button’s Queenie, and Empire’s Cookie, each take audiences on very specific journeys that leave them thinking about the ride and the person driving it, long after the credits roll. The fans respond to the characters by sitting what they loved about them at my feet. Truly, I’m always thrown by who responds to which characters. I can run across a black girl from Harlem and she’ll say, “God, I loved you in Benjamin Button!” and I can get the same level of excitement from a bunch of giggly Lebanese girls out shopping in Neiman Marcus, running up to me and yelling, “Argh! It’s Cookie! We love Cookie!”
The first time I realized my characters resonated with audiences across racial, ethnic, cultural, and economic boundaries was one particular evening when I was leaving the old Landmark Hotel in Hollywood. There I was, walking toward the valet, my feet a little sore, my eyes heavy from fatigue and pinot noir, when I spotted a small group of handsome white men, all dressed in suits, looking as corporate as they come. I gave them the once-over and one of my best smiles, thinking, Well, feel free to holler at me! And then, sure enough, they walked toward me and one said, “Hey! You were in Baby Boy, weren’t you?”
I grinned. “Yes,” I said, totally flattered that they not only recognized me, but also knew me from a flick I completely didn’t expect that they would have known, much less watched. Remember, Baby Boy, which performed modestly at the box office, was barely a blip on anybody’s radar; I was sure that no one outside of a very specific urban (read: black) audience had seen it. It wasn’t until it came out on DVD that it got the shine it deserved and became an iconic film, but that hadn’t happened yet.
A similar experience occurred when I tested for my first television series, The Division, on Lifetime TV. There I was, standing in a room full of white suits—network types who couldn’t get any more corporate than in this particular crowd. And one man, Aaron Lipstadt, stood up and said, in all earnestness, “Your work in Baby Boy was phenomenal.”
Their responses, unexpected but pure and welcome, give me air, and they let me know that my instinct to connect with the audience through my commitment to the truth wins every time.
11
On Being a Black Woman in Hollywood