Who Is Naomi Ackie? Get to Know the 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody' Star
glamour.com. “It’s kind of odd, right? It’s like the universe knitting together.” Whitney Houston was built into Ackie’s DNA growing up in Walthamstow, London.
She listened to all of her music and watched every one of her films. But when Ackie was first approached about auditioning for the film, she assumed it was to play anyone but Houston.
Even with critically acclaimed roles in Master of None, Star Wars Episode IX, and The End of the F****** World under her belt, she still had to be convinced to go for the role of Whitney herself. “I remember saying to my therapist, ‘It’s going to be really hard,’ and she was like, ‘That’s okay.
You can do hard things,’” Ackie says from her New York City hotel room, where she’ll soon get ready for the film’s premiere. “It really hit a chord with me, and that was at the beginning, before I even started the journey.” Directed by Kasi Lemmons (Harriet) and written by Anthony McCarten (Bohemian Rhapsody), that journey involved a four-month audition process and eight months of filming all over Boston. “It was hard, but it was also extremely special," she says. "Doing this job has done so much for me career-wise, but also personally, knowing that I could find courage to try something like this and not limit myself.
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