Caffeinated Clint
Just as in person Queen Latifah’s character, Leslie Wright in ”Just Wright” is hard to not like. The film, a romantic comedy following two lifelong best friends who, at opposite ends of the dating spectrum find themselves interested in the same man, NBA superstar Scott McKnight (Common).
Queen Latifah caught up with Moviehole in NYC and spoke to Tim Johnson about her most valuable advice from a high school basketball coach, producing the film and her ‘crazy’ love life.
You’ve played a lot of different roles and had great success in music. How do you stay grounded?
QL: I’m imperfect. I’m imperfect, I know it. And I’m constantly trying to grow. Maybe the person that the outside world gets to see looks a lot more polished than my inner me, but I know that there’s a lot more growing that I have to do and I’m working on it. So I don’t get caught up in all the hype. I’m enjoying doing it. I’m a fighter, I’m a builder, I’m a team player. Me and my partner, we go hard and we always have. And I’m a daughter, and hopefully I’ll be a mother, but right now I’m a daughter and an aunty and I’m trying to just be a good woman and fight through whatever I have to fight through, and thrive. Not just fight and survive, but really thrive. You know I’m not just a survivor. I’m the type of person who, while I’m surviving and going to thrive, I’m going to have some fun and going to do something that makes things interesting. And I’m going to make sure life is lived to the fullest. I don’t really know how to do it. I mean, I come from a Vietnam veteran, cop, SWAT father and a queen of a teacher, of a nurturer of a mother and a fighter. And I had a big brother who kind of bullied me around.
That will keep you grounded!
QL: You know toughened me up a little bit. And also was a Pisces like me, so he was very gentle as well. I kind of have those sensitivities, I’m able to be me and at the same time, treat everybody like a human being, not worse or better than anyone. And that gives me an ability to see people, just look at them for who they are as opposed to, ‘I have to fit in to this and that’. I went through that very early. Now I’m over it, been over it for a long time. See where I fit in to the world, where I go from here.
This film obviously features basketball, and you played when you were younger, did that help center you, keep you grounded?
QL: Well I’ll tell you, basketball really showed me a lot of things. One of the things that basketball taught me was to be a team player. And how to work with a group of people to accomplish one common goal. That’s no different to a movie, that’s no different from an album. You can’t do everything by yourself. No man is an island. And so in order to get a movie done, you have 150 people that you have to motivate, to keep them going, keep them working, and keep them excited. And they might not be getting the best check that they want, and we might be pulling long hours. And everybody still has to fire on all pistons to make it the best movie it can be. That’s not easy to do sometimes. Sometimes it’s about letting people know you feel their pain; you’re in the trenches with them. You get it. Hey, I’m not picking up all those wires, I’m not carrying a bunch of sandbags, but I’m working hard like you. I’m in this with you , let’s all do it together, let’s do this, let’s get it done. You know? Sometimes you’re in the studio and you’re in there for like 10, 12, 14 hours, trying to make the right record, trying to get everything done. And the engineer has to feel energized, and he’s been sitting there and trying to drink some coffee and he wants to go home, but we’re doing something special and we can’t just leave yet. We need you right now. And he gets it. When the vibe is right, you got to stay and ride it out, you know what I mean? But it’s a team effort. Another thing I learned from team sports, really from my coach in high school was about composure. Composure, composure, composure. I mean, basketball is quick, it’s fast. You got to put it, you got to run. Not only just the drills up and down the court – he would work us out, but he would also drill in to us composure. That word was drilled into our head. Don’t lose your cool under pressure, be composed, keep your composure. Whenever we’d start to lose it, we’ve been playing this big team, they’ve been winning all these games, ‘Come here… keep your f***ing composure! You can beat this team, you can do this, don’t forget what we learned. Keep your composure, be composed’. Boom. It would bring us back. ‘Alright, let’s go get them!’ You know what I mean. And that’s the kind of things that basketball teaches you. You come in that huddle, the coach tells you those words, ‘Alright we got this, let’s go out and get them’. And that has been able to sustain me a lot of places throughout my career. To keep composed in the weirdest situations, around the strangest people, in the most interesting crowds, ‘OK, just be composed. I know this is a very strange situation, you be you, let them be them’. And it’s all good.
That was a long answer to one question. Damn!
With your character Leslie in the film, she’s one of those ‘Always the bridesmaid, never the bride’ girls. What preparation did you do and what did you draw on for her character?
QL: Really it was just trying to be Leslie. Leslie is not an insecure woman. She’s not the kind of girl who’s going to go home and cry about it. About not having a great date, she’s just so over it. And you see certain women, they’re pretty, they’re hardworking, they’re well rounded, well spoken, you look at them from the outside and you’re like, ‘What an amazing woman’ and then when they want to go out on a date, they do their routine kind of thing and you want them to punch it up a little bit, and you kind of root for them as your coworkers, and you’re like, ‘Come on girl, just throw that extra bracelet on. Girl you can’t go out there like that’. You look at them like a sister in a way, and you want them to win. She’s the type of girl you want to win. She’s the kind of girl who is very hard to hate, because she’s not an unfair, she’s not a mean spirited person. She’s very helpful to everyone around her and she’s very good at what she does (physical therapist). And so you kind of want her to have ‘that guy’ on her arm, who is ‘the’ guy, who just takes care of her. Because she takes care of everyone else.
Did you ever see it as a new age Cinderella story?
QL: It’s definitely a new age Cinderella. It’s not quite a Cinderella in the sense that Cinderella has these evil stepsisters and this mean-ass stepmother who treat her like garbage. This is not so simple. Even the ‘villain’ in this movie is not quite as villainess as you might want her to be. The ‘hero’ is you will and the ‘villain’ are tight like glue. And they’re sisters. And they relate to one another. They know one another like the back of each other’s hand. So, as much as they might be angry with one another, they tend not to go against each other in public. And that’s difficult. Because they want to choke the hell out of each other at times. Because sometimes they do things that the other doesn’t like. But they really can’t get away with it because they love one another. There’s love underneath all of that. And so that makes it very tricky, when you want to choke somebody but you love them. But you want to beat the hell out of them, but you love them. Then you want to stomp them, but you love them. So, I think that’s the difference in this film and I think it’s looked at in a realistic way. When you look at it, it’s like, ‘God, what do I do?’ I know, my girls, the girls that I know, I mean I’m not quite in the mix quite like that, but some of the girls that I know, when they roll, when a girl chooses, then everybody steps back. But what happens when the guy feels chemistry with that girl? It may work out like that, but when the girl chooses, we all step back. You know what I mean? And that’s just got to take its course. And if it finds its way back around, fine, it’ll find its way back around. But, we’re going to back off at that point, and you can be staring in to my eyes, ‘I love you, I love you’, from across the room, but she liked you first, so I got to wait. There’s just certain unwritten rules and it makes it very difficult, even in a friend situation just connect with that love like electricity, like it’s on. I think we address some of those things in this film differently than other movies may have done in the past.
This film plays on the girl’s fantasy that ultimately does get the guy. Is that true of your real life, or is this a fantasy for Latifah also?
QL: Uh yes it’s a fantasy! I’m kissing Common! Are you crazy? Where else can I get away with that? He ‘aint single! I’m just kidding. I’m an actor, so a lot of this is fantasy. I get to enjoy myself with Henry Simmons and LL Cool J and Common. I get to live a girls’ dream and trust me, I enjoy that. I’m in that moment. I enjoy, what I enjoy, when I’m enjoying it. But for Latifah, no. I have a crazy love life, I always have, it’s not been as smooth as my professional life, that’s a lot easier to navigate as with most people. But, I’m not unlucky at all, so I don’t have anything to be angry about, or upset about. I’ve had a good time in my life, and I’m good. I’ve had a great time at things.
You played Motormouth Maybelle in ”Hairspray”, what would she say about Leslie?
QL: She’d be like, ‘GO ON GIRL! GET IT!’
In ”Hairspray” you were able to combine them, but do you take more pleasure from acting or singing?
QL: I take pleasure in today. What’s done is done. I’m looking forward, but I’m here right now. So I’ll enjoy today as a beautiful, warm day and that’s what I enjoy in my career as right here, right now and taking one day at a time. I don’t know what’s coming in the future, so I’m excited about what there is to see. I’m going to work towards things, but right now is what I do have. And I’ll just focus on that, and not bite off more than I can chew, or reminisce on what’s done already. We got a lot more to do. So that’s kind of how I look at it. That’s what I think, has given me a certain edge. I don’t read my headlines and be like, ‘Wow! You did that? You did that too?!’
What were your biggest obstacles as a producer and playing Leslie in the film?
QL: Being an actor and a producer in this movie was gratifying, challenging, interesting, fun and a lot of work. But ultimately, it’s what I love to do. I mean, I wasn’t alone. I had my partner Shakim (Compere, co producer), I had my partner Debra (Martin Chase, co producer) and together we were able to navigate a lot of difficult issues, shooting on such a short schedule, in New York, on location, in the summer, through a lot of rain. Last summer it rained a lot, maybe like three out of seven days it rained! I was like, ‘What the hell New York is this?’ But, nevertheless it was fantastic, and just being able to be a part of casting and hiring some really talented, amazing people. People who have come before me and set the example for me. Had they not come, I would not have been here. Like, Phylicia Rashad (plays Ella McKnight) and Pam Grier (plays Janice Wright) and James Pickens (Jr., plays Lloyd Wright). And having the NBA and these basketball players be involved in the project, and having Paula (Patton, plays Morgan Alexander), my girl and Common my boy, by Scott McKnight, had they not been those people, it would not be as fun, honestly. So, it was worth every moment, every minute. And I’m really proud of what we were able to do. And then having Sanaa (Hamri, director), this crazy Moroccan chick, who comes out of nowhere and just directs the hell out of the movie, it was worth every moment, believe me. And I’ll keep riding it, double-thing like that.
”Just Wright” is in theaters across America May 14.
