She might be winning praise for her breathtaking performance as the late icon Whitney Houston but Londoner Naomi Ackie spent her childhood dreaming of being a different pop star.
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“I wanted to be Baby Spice growing up. It was a real battle in the playground. We’d play Spice Girls and I always wanted to be Baby… She was the best! The pigtails! She was a baby. I was a baby. I was like five and just a big fan of the Spice Girls in general. Fanatical about it!”
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Naomi followed acting school with parts in TV and film, including 2019’s blockbuster Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. She won the role of the legendary I Will Always Love You singer following a long audition process and months of research - but never wanted her portrayal to be just an impersonation.
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“I wanted to recreate these moments, I wanted to portray Whitney… but also put my stamp on it. It was never about mimicking and imitating down to a tee. I guess you could call it like an Expressionist painting of a person, a poem of a person, rather than a factual, verbatim thing. Because, to be honest, that’s not possible.”
The new biopic is out from Boxing Day
The result is a powerful celebration of the incomparable performer. From New Jersey choir girl to one of the best-selling singers of all time, Whitney’s story is both inspirational and poignant. Marketed in the eighties as ‘America’s sweetheart’, she wasn’t always allowed to be true to herself, resulting in well-publicised mental health battles. It’s a situation Naomi hopes wouldn’t happen today.
“I would hope that the things that happened to Whitney and others in that time are harder to occur [now]. Hopefully there’s a bit more responsibility in terms of looking after the performer and more acknowledgement of how hard it is to he a pop star. Yes, the work is one thing but it’s also about being a public figure and having those expectations put on you. I think we’re moving in the right direction but I still think there are things to be worked on…”
'I think we’re moving in the right direction but I still think there are things to be worked on'
Mainly though, I Wanna Dance With Somebody is a story of resilience, most notably when the star comes back from personal and professional troubles in 1999 with the anthemic ‘It’s Not Right But It’s Okay’, complete with its slick video featuring Whitney in a sexy black leather dress - an outfit not lost on Naomi: “To be honest, when I put it on I was, like ‘Ha! All my exes are going to see this!’ Petty, petty, petty!”
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With I Wanna Dance With Somebody on the big screen this Christmas and with movies alongside Channing Tatum and Robert Pattinson coming soon, Naomi’s certainly going to be more in the public eye - a situation that wasn’t always good for Whitney Houston and about which Naomi also has some concerns.
Naomi opened up about holding onto normality after the film is released
“Whitney said something in an interview: ‘Success doesn’t change you. Fame does.’ That always stuck with me. The success is the thing I always wanted - successful in my craft, a successful actor. But I never wanted fame. I think sometimes we confuse the two. It’s going to be something that I’ll just have to adjust to but also put in its place a little bit, not let it take up too much of my life. Because I love my normal, anonymous life. I really do! So I’m going to hold onto all of it if I can.”
Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody (12A) is in UK cinemas from Boxing Day.
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