Beyoncé
As Beyoncé breaks into her biggest role yet, it’s clear that this woman is aiming for the stars—and catching every one.
words by > Bret Love
It’s as if everything in her 14-year career has been leading to this. “Listen,” she sings, pleadingly at first, then gradually growing more insistent. “Listen to the sound from deep within. It’s only beginning to find release. Oh, the time has come for my dreams to be heard.”
Though hers is a career that has already been filled with many highlights, this is the moment in her third major film, Dreamgirls, in which Beyoncé Knowles evolves from mere beautiful pop star into something bigger and infinitely more significant. It is a moment that will make you root for her character, and the young woman playing her. And it is a moment that will definitely make you reconsider the way you perceive the former Destiny’s Child frontwoman.
“No,” she says of her character in the film, “Deena Jones is not me. But we have a lot of similarities.”
And indeed she does. Deena is 16 when she and her two friends sneak out to perform at a talent show that lands them a manager (Jamie Foxx) and a gig as backup singers for soul man James “Thunder” Early (Eddie Murphy). Beyoncé was a mere 11 years old when Destiny’s Child appeared on “Star Search” and 16 when they were offered a contract with Columbia Records. Shy Deena gradually emerges as the leader of world-renowned R&B trio The Dreams (originally modeled on The Supremes, with Deena their Diana Ross). Beyoncé became the star of Destiny’s Child early on, and by their third album had assumed co-writing and co-producing duties.
More controversially, Deena’s best friend Effie (played by former “American Idol” finalist Jennifer Hudson) leaves the group after Curtis focuses the spotlight squarely on Deena. Original Destiny’s Child member LaTavia Roberson and longtime member LeToya Luckett filed a joint lawsuit against Beyoncé’s father Matthew in 1999, claiming that he kept a disproportionate share of the band’s profits and unfairly favored his daughter. Ultimately, Deena eventually breaks off and becomes her own woman, asserting her independence with the show-stopping “Listen.” Beyoncé, inspired by the four-month shoot on Dreamgirls, cut short her planned Miami vacation last year in order to record a critically-acclaimed album (B’Day, which was released on her 25th birthday, September 4) that nobody—not her father, not her mother, not even her record label— knew about. In short, after 14 years of allowing others to call the shots, Beyoncé took control.
The funny thing is, although Deena Jones seems like the part Beyoncé was born to play, she almost didn’t get the opportunity to play it. “I can’t even talk about it because my voice will start shaking,” she says during an interview at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons, her chestnut brown eyes full of emotion. “I’ve been hearing about Dreamgirls since I was
15. I’ve never seen it because I was born the year it was on Broadway (1981). But I’ve seen a bootleg tape, and I’ve been hearing everything about Deena because my choreographer is obsessed with her. They told me they were doing this movie, and I said, ‘Oh my God, I have to have this!’ At first they weren’t sure if I could play the part, because I hadn’t done anything like it on film, but I knew I could do it.”
It was precisely that sort of determination that ultimately won over writer-director Bill Condon, who won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for 1998’s Gods and Monsters and was nominated again in 2003 for his adaptation of Chicago. Though Beyoncé had made a fine impression in supporting roles in crowd-pleasing comedies such as Austin Powers in Goldmember and The Pink Panther, Dreamgirls demanded an actress with broad range, who was capable of capturing the difficult 20-year evolution of a character who begins her journey as a naïve ingénue and winds up a powerful diva. During their initial meeting, Condon expressed concern that the pop star was too famous for audiences to accept her as a character like Deena.
So Beyoncé did what every other hungry young actress in the world has to do: she agreed to a screen test. And it was smack dab in the middle of Destiny’s Child’s farewell world tour. Thankfully, she won Condon over, bringing a fresh, Marilyn Monroe-style sex kitten quality to the character and nailing the original Broadway choreography for the “Dreamgirls” theme song.
“I’ve never wanted a part so much,” Beyoncé admits. “I felt so much better that I had to prove myself. I get to play a character with brains. I have dramatic scenes and emotional scenes and very funny scenes. I had to be subtle and graceful, but still ambitious and manipulative without being obvious.”
Of course, getting the part was merely the beginning. Condon put his all-star cast (also including Tony winner Anika Noni Rose as the third Dream, Lorrell, and Danny Glover as Early’s manager) through a pre-production boot camp that included hours of singing and dancing—as well as the task of learning four new songs written for the film by Henry Krieger, who also composed the original musical. According to Condon, the R&B diva rose to the challenge and proved a dedicated workhorse, putting in one 15-hour day after another. Beyoncé, equally, has nothing but praise for the director.
“Bill Condon knows so much and is so detail oriented,” she gushes. “We had two months to rehearse—I’ve never experienced anything like it. It allowed me and the other ladies to really bond. We had such a great chemistry together, on and off screen. We did crazy things together that friends do. We were all so excited to be there that we were all like, ‘Is this real? Are we really in this film?’”
Now that she’s nailed her first dramatic role, Beyoncé seems to have emerged with an even greater sense of confidence than before. By most accounts, B’Day is the finest album of her career, recorded in less than a month on a relatively economical budget with A-list producers such as Rich Harrison (who co-wrote her hit “Crazy In Love”), Swizz Beats and Rodney Jerkins, all of whom she hand picked herself. But, according to Beyoncé, the decision to leave her fellow Destiny’s Child divas behind was the most difficult decision she’s ever made.
“It’s easy to stay in a group,” she reasons, “and hard to leave a group when you love each other and there’s nothing [negative] going on. It’s easy when you hate each other and you can’t stand to be in the same room, but not when you still share dressing rooms, still love each other and you’re still selling millions of records. We were still successful, but I took that risk and it was very scary.”
From embarking on a solo journey and defying her father to tackling the most challenging role of her burgeoning acting career, Beyoncé has been all about taking risks lately. But this beautiful butterfly is also smart enough to test her wings before attempting to take flight. Hundreds of singers and rappers have attempted to make the big transition to a successful career in Hollywood, but few possess the sage wisdom to take it slow, start small and gradually learn the craft before tackling a major dramatic role.
“I just want to challenge myself and learn,” Beyoncé says. “Every movie I do, I learn a little bit more. After going on auditions, getting some movies, not getting other movies and having more life experiences, I realized that I am an actor and I can really do this right. I admire people like Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross, who took that risk and are really good at it.”
Diana Ross—the woman on whose life the character of Deena was based—was the pop star whose breakthrough role in the 1972 Billie Holiday biopic Lady Sings The Blues (made when she 28) found her blazing the very same trail on which Beyoncé Knowles now finds herself. No matter how you add up all the facts, it leads to one conclusion: this is Beyoncé’s big moment.