See the ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ cast next to the real people they play
Whitney Houston's looks were just as iconic as her voice — and both are on full display in the new movie "I Wanna Dance With Somebody."The biopic opened in theaters Dec. 23 and stars Naomi Ackie as the legendary singer alongside Stanley Tucci as record producer Clive Davis and Ashton Sanders as Bobby Brown.
It's been over a decade since the The “I Will Always Love You” singer died in 2012. Houston, then 48, was found unresponsive in a bathtub the night before the Grammys. The official cause of death was accidental drowning and “effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use," per the coroner's report.
Thanks to casting and costume design, the cast bears a remarkable resemblance to who they're portraying. Keep scrolling to see how the cast compares to the real people.
Naomi Ackie as Whitney Houston
Ackie, 30, told Elle Magazine that she almost talked herself out of auditioning for the role of Whitney Houston.
Her hesitations included "the amount of exposure, not looking like Whitney at all, (and) the amount of work I would need to do to be able to get close to playing her." But once she "got past" those doubts, she had a mindset shift. "I knew that if they said yes to me, that I would say yes."
Ackie told the magazine that portraying Houston was about including as many Whitney-isms as possible.
"The challenges were really about specifying the parts of her that I noticed that I thought were particularly poignant or special or funny or very human that I wanted to convey to give her as much humanity as I possibly could."
Ashton Sanders as Bobby Brown
Ashton Sanders, 27, plays Houston's ex-husband and musician Bobby Brown. Previous biopics about the former couple, namely "Whitney" on Lifetime, framed Brown as a villain who led Houston astray.
Sanders told The Grio he worked with Ackie and the film's director, Kasi Lemmons, to “stay away from harmful tropes and depictions” of the couple" because they wanted to “tell the truth” of their love story.
Clarke Peters as John Houston
Clarke Peters, 70, is known for his role as Detective Lester Freamon in "The Wire." Peters told PIX11, a local New York station, that he tried to find "what the emotional journey" of John Houston, who had a complicated relationship with Whitney Houston. He filed a $100 million lawsuit against his daughter the year before his death, which was thrown out in 2004 by a New Jersey superior court judge.
"There's something in you as a human being that vibrates with that and that's what I lock into and that's what I try to find," he said. "And in this instance, there was sense of not only conflict of love for your daughter and also the possibility of making a lot of money."
Stanley Tucci as Clive Davis
Stanley Tucci, 62, plays Clive Davis, a legendary record producer who discovered Houston when she was 19.
Tucci, who is bald, told Yahoo Movies that wearing wigs helped him get into character.
“There were some wonderful designers on the film, including my friend Anne Morgan. She created all the wigs and was there to put them on me,” he explained.
“Sometimes we would do three different eras in one day. All that stuff — the wigs, padding — makes a big difference to me because I’m a physical actor and when you have all that, you change physically and instantly you change everything inside as well," he said.
Tamara Tunie as Cissy Houston
"Law and Order: SVU" alum Tamara Tunie plays Houston's mother, Cissy Houston. She said on "The Tamron Hall Show" that to prepare for the role, she read the books Cissy Houston wrote about her life and her relationship with Whitney and she watched every interview she could find, and consulted friends who know Cissy Houston.
"I just wanted to understand and get a sense of who Cissy was and what her relationship was with her daughter beyond what we saw on the surface," Tunie says in hopes that it'll come through on screen.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
