*For anyone still waiting on that Nina Simone biopic with Zoe Saldana and are a bit frustrated with it’s delay, don’t worry.
Saldana shares your emotions over it, saying the late songstress “deserves better” as she responded to criticism over her being cast as Simone while discussing the work she put in to do her justice in the film.
“I needed to walk her path. As a woman, it wasn’t difficult to empathize with another woman. But I needed to be very isolated. I moved out of my house for three months. I wasn’t really talking to anybody that I knew. I just needed to be all things Nina. It was so intense, and everything happened really fast,” Saldana said while airing her frustration over it not coming together as she hoped. “The people behind the project weren’t my cup of tea. The director was fine, but there was a lot of mismanagement, which is why we’re still here three years later. And I’m still trying to fight with everybody to get the movie finished. Nina deserves better.”
The delay over the biopic obviously stings Saldana, who detailed how she prepared to play Simone.
“I read as much as I could and spoke to as many people who knew her, who interviewed her. I listened to her voice, to her tone,” Saldana shared. “She was angry, and rightfully so. She was a black woman born ahead of her time. Her soul, her spirit was never able to accept or adapt to the heartbreaks that life was giving her. Those are means for insanity. She was bipolar, and at that time, very little was known about bipolar disorder. A lot of people were self-medicating through substances, and she was doing it with alcohol. I wanted to understand all those things, and see what that was going to bring out of me. I never wanted to judge her.”
For more of Saldana’s interview with Latina magazine, click here.
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