Naomi Ackie, far from a lookalike of the late pop singer, says ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is a study ‘on the essence of Whitney.’
Naomi Ackie, who stars in the new biopic “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” is the first to admit that she is not a doppelganger for the singer. In fact, she’ll go so far as to say she doesn’t look like her at all.
“I was like, are you guys sure? Are you absolutely sure?” Ackie said in an interview.
But the people who really knew Houston, her family and record producer Clive Davis among them, were all convinced that the rising British actor was right for the film, meant to be a music-filled celebration and a kind of corrective to other projects that took a more salacious treatment.
“It’s a study on the essence of Whitney and not the image of Whitney,” Ackie said. “I thought, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to speak on Whitney’s internal world, and everything else is completely out of my control.”
The film, directed by Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou,” “Harriet”) and written by “Bohemian Rhapsody” scribe Anthony McCarten, shows Houston’s ascent from New Jersey choir girl to global superstar, with a focus on the woman behind the icon, troubles, triumphs and all, up until her death in 2012 at age 48.
