Even as a recording artist with a similarly royal title, Queen Latifah may not have been destined to play the Empress of the Blues.
But her starring as blues great Bessie Smith in the bio pic “Bessie” (HBO, 8 p.m.) tonight has been in the making for more than a couple of decades.
“This project has been with us for 22 years,” says Latifah.
Speaking to reporters at the TV Critics Association winter press tour earlier this year, she said producers brought her the first draft of the screenplay by celebrated playwright Horton Foote when she was just 22 by those who thought they saw something of the 1930s blues giant in the young rapper.
“I had no idea who Bessie Smith was, to be honest with you,” says Latifah, the former Dana Owen of New Jersey. “So I had to become familiar with who she was in particular. And I was just blown away because I can hear her voice in so many artists’ voices that came after her. And her power, for her to be able to command a room like this with no audio equipment and blow out everybody in the back of the room and further, to me kind of spoke to where her voice came from.
“It came from a deep, deep place physically to push that voice out. And, then, to have a story, the emotional story and journey that went along with those words as she wrote, to me, was pretty incredible,” she says.
“As I listen to other blues artists, I’m still I’m still enamored of Bessie, and I have such a great amount of respect for what she was able to accomplish. But just listening strictly to the music, the music, I mean, it may be almost a hundred years old, but it has a power that a lot of artists could learn from today.
“If there was a Bessie Smith out right now, she’d blow everybody out of the water, no question. I could never match her true vocal ability, but I did the best that I could, you know, to kind of make her story rise along with what God gave me.”
Still, portraying Smith was something she couldn’t quite do when she was 22.
“I don’t think I had the life journey that went along with what Bessie had gone through to really play this role,” Latifah says. “I could have played her and done a great job, but I think the life experience, I got to live more of the blues.”
The ups and down of a female in the hip-hop industry and a one season daytime talk show aren’t the stuff of the rough-and-tumble blues depicted in detail in the film, from the cheap pay, prejudice to alcohol fueled brawls that would break out at a moment’s notice.
So when it came time to make the film directed by Dee Rees, showing Smith’s rise from a protégée to Ma Rainey, played with some style by Mo’Nique, Latifah says she did her best to become the blues singer.
“We had a small amount of time to capture so much, and she began to just live in me. I would pray, ‘Okay. Bessie, tell me what to do here, and tell me what to do here’; that hopefully her spirit would sort of come into me. And I felt like it did because, there were just certain things that I couldn’t believe that she did.
“She was so brave yet so vulnerable, not unlike today’s woman. But there were so many things that were so groundbreaking for that period of time that still speak to today’s issues,” she says. “I just felt like she was such a strong, powerful person that there were so many things I wanted to apply to my own life, just things that I would want to have the courage to always do.
“And she took a lot of punishment. She took a lot of punishment, and so she had to I know what it’s like to, sort of, play through pain, to, you know, keep your head up, the show must go on, you know. Hell is breaking loose at home, but the people paid to see a show.
“I could relate to so many of those things. And at the end of the day as an artist, a recording artist, I know what it’s like to immerse yourself in the music where all that, sort of, fades away, and you just become one with the music.
“And that gives you such a peace and an escape that I felt like we were walking lockstep at some point. At some point, as an actor, you can work for the role; but, at some point, the role works for you. That character takes over you. You are not so much taking over it. You know, it’s kind of like riding a horse and closing your eyes and letting the horse it knows what it sees. It can see the trail. Trust it. And that’s what happened to me in the process of making this film.”
“Bessie” also stars Michael Kenneth Williams — Omar from “The Wire” — as her husband Jack G., Mike Epps as her bootlegger and romantic interest, Tika Sumpter as another romantic interest and Khandi Alexander as her spiteful older sister.
The film has a lavish production style, with a lot of interesting details of how the music business worked nearly a century ago, from touring to recording. But because Smith’s life was big and messy, so is the film, which starts to feel quite long.
And despite a dependency on hits that Smith wrote herself, there is less performance in the film than you would expect and a whole lot more drinking and fighting. Odd too that it leaves out one of the most dramatic things about Smith’s life — how she died.
But there’s no doubt Latifah embodies the character and provides surprisingly convincing echoes of her booming blues style — reflecting an uncompromising, strong woman in the male dominated field of the blues the same way young Queen Latifah was in rap.