- Janet | Interview
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- +Why Did I Get Married? Press Conference+
What was it you saw in these actors that made you want to
cast them?
Tyler Perry:
“First of all, I love new faces. I love breaking new faces in. Lamman [Rucker],
Denise [Boutte] and Sharon [Leal] had already done a couple a few things and
Dreamgirls. As I was writing the movie, the cast just kind of came together.
What I do is just write it and surrender it. Denise really pushed for Tasha
[Smith] to have this role.
We had just [done] Daddy’s Little Girls and
I’m so glad she got it because I don’t see anybody else playing the role. She
was amazing. Janet [Jackson] and I were talking, I think, a week or so before we
started because their deal went really quick. Jill [Scott] had auditioned and
was perfect for it.”
You’ve said this is the best movie you’ve made.
Why?
Tyler Perry: “I try
to grow on every film, but I’m walking now. I was crawling on everything else.
The way this story was told I think was very unique. Using the camera the way I
did was very different for me. There’s some people who really get into camera
movement and all this other stuff, but for me, I really stretched it. And having
an amazing cast really made the movie come alive because everybody brought their
own personality to it.”
Tasha Smith: “I think there was a lot of
camaraderie among the cast. We all just hit it off and friendships were built
from day one. It’s so sincere. We all genuinely really love each other. We had
so much fun. We would always rehearse because we knew Tyler was so busy with our
shooting schedule and everything. We always wanted to get on the set and be as
prepared as possible so that he wouldn’t have to get us there, as far as our
work was concerned. We would all come together and work it out. We would talk a
lot about our characters and our relationships. The girls would hang out and
bond.”
Tyler, was
their any concern that when you bring in a big name like Janet Jackson, this
wouldn’t be as much of an ensemble cast?
Tyler Perry: “Janet was very, very adamant going in that she
wanted an ensemble piece. I thought, ‘Why don’t we change this? Why don’t we
make it a little…’ She’s like, ‘No, it’s all there. Everything is there. It’s
perfect for me.’ She’s very fair that way. I think the biggest hurdle was
getting over ‘Janet Jackson’ as you’re watching the movie. But if you watch it
for longer than 15 minutes, you realize that Janet is not Janet. She’s Patricia
the character. She’s totally surrender to it.”
Janet, was there anything in the role
of Patricia that you saw in yourself?
Janet Jackson: “There were a few things, actually. Like Tyler had
said earlier, there was really no time to prepare for the role because he
brought myself and my husband in last.”
Tyler Perry: “Her husband in the
film.”
Janet Jackson: “Yes, yes. A lot of my friends they call me ‘the
therapist’. They come to me looking for advice. I must be doing something right
because they keep coming back. But I’m not very good at kind of looking into my
own world and trying to pick apart what is really wrong and fix those things. I
like to kind of shy away from certain issues and turn away.”
Jill, can you talk about the
transition from musician to actor?
Jill Scott: “I don’t know that it’s really different, really.
When I write a song, I tap into the emotion and the feeling, and then I use the
emotion to write the words. It’s the opposite when I act. I use the words and
tap into the emotion. It’s basically the same for me, in a lot of ways. I don’t
know how different it is.”
You touch upon African American women dealing with HIV. Can you
talk about that?
Tasha
Smith: “One thing I will say about what I love about Tyler Perry and his writing
is that he addresses things that a lot of times in our community we are afraid
to address. He keeps it real. He keeps it honest, and that’s why it made it
really easy for us as actors to say those words. They’re words that we think and
things that we experience and see, but we don’t always say it. So we got an
opportunity to do that.”
Lamman Rucker: “I particularly do a lot of work
with HIV and AIDS prevention education, so that was definitely something that
hit close to home for me as well. It was good. I think a lot of people obviously
shy away from the pressure and the responsibility of being role models, or
whatever language you want to use. But I also think it’s very important that you
have a cast that not only as human beings, but as actors, even though characters
were intelligent, highly trained, mature, loving people, we all are setting an
example to some degree. If that’s the type of people and characters that we are,
I found it very impressive that it was important that we were modeling at least
certain types of behavior that other people would listen to and would emulate.
He does a great job.”
Sharon Leal: “I think part of Tyler’s appeal, the
reason he’s so loved and his fan base is so huge is because it’s undeniable that
the social consciousness that he has. If you go to his website, he writes
letters personally to his fans and gives them an opportunity to talk. He cares
about what we’re all going through as a community. It’s amazing to have someone
that in tune and that caring wanting to bring important issues to help people
get through.”
Janet, you mentioned that you are the go-to person for a lot of
your friends. Is that a recent development or is that something you evolved
into?
Janet Jackson: “It
has kind of always been that way with my friends.”
Why do you think relationships go
wrong?
Tyler Perry: “I
had just come out of a relationship that was really one of the most difficult
ones I have been in, and I learned so much from it. I'm always asking questions
like, ‘God, what was this about? Show me the lesson in this, show me the lesson
in this.’ As I was asking and finding the lesson, I started writing these
characters. So that's where it came from for me. As far as why do relationships
go so wrong, I think people are looking for other people to validate and to fix
them, rather than doing the work themselves to get themselves, to make
themselves whole, to get themselves better so that they can be ready for the
other person.”
After doing this movie, why would you get
married?
Janet Jackson:
“I don't know.
I don't know if I would actually sign the piece of paper
and actually get married. I think for myself, especially going through it twice,
being divorced twice, it would be more of a spiritual commitment. Finding your
soul mate and exchanging vows, that's still marriage in a different way. That’s
enough for me. I don’t really need anything else to validate what we have, not
saying that you guys do, but that's the way I think I would want
[it].”
Tyler, can
you talk about taking this from stage to film?
Tyler Perry: “I think it relieves it. Stage,
there are a lot of challenges because you're so limited to two hours and how far
you can go, and how many places you can take it. On film, my mind and my
imagination could just go and open up. That's why we ended up in Canada shooting
for a week, rather than on some soundstage somewhere. But most of the movie was
shot on a soundstage. But it takes place over a year so it frees me. To write
film frees me up.”
Janet, are you finished with your
next album? What direction are you taking?
Janet Jackson: “No, I’m working on it. It’ll
be out probably first quarter of next year. I’m doing something, still being who
I am, I’ll never shy from that. I’m working with a few people. I’m working with
Ne-Yo, I’m working with Jermaine, working with Rodney Jenkins…”
(Tyler
Perry points at himself and everyone laughs)
Lamman Rucker: “They’ll be
doing a duet together.”
Janet Jackson: “This is something different for
me because normally it’s myself, Jimmy [Jam] and Terry [Lewis] and always
writing music and myself writing the melodies. This is a bit of a departure from
[that].”
So Jimmy and Terry are not involved?
Janet Jackson: “As of now,
no.”
Janet, what
gave you the inspiration for your character?
Janet Jackson: “…I haven’t had children,
never experienced that before what Patricia and her husband had gone through.
But what really was a pull from myself was – the closest I could come to it was
my love of animals, my love for animals. I call them my babies. So there was one
in particular that I still haven’t gotten over, and I don’t like to talk about
it too much cause it brings up that feeling. It was a difficult scene for me to
do, but I had a piture of her actually in the living room while I was doing the
scene of she and I when I was a little younger, like in my 20’s. She was my
life, and she still is my life, so I drew upon that.”
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