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Gabby Sidibe in Precious


Lee Daniels desperately wanted to adapt the novel “Push” by poet and author Sapphire from the moment he turned the last page. The story, a heartbreaker about a young, obese girl caught in a cycle of abuse and incest, spoke to him on a deeply personal level but never did he imagine that his film version would move the masses.

“It touched me, and I don’t do movies for other people, I do movies for me. It touched my spirit, it touched my soul. It rocked my soul,” he told Cineplex during the Toronto International Film Festival this September. “So I really wanted to bring it to the big screen.”

And bring it, he did. Casting newbie Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe as the title character in Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire proved to be the ace up his sleeve as the novice turns out a performance so harrowing and genuine that it’s hard to believe she isn’t the troubled girl we see onscreen.

“She is not the character and had to learn to become this woman. And that was challenging and rewarding because she's so much smarter than me," he said. "She's younger so that mind is quick. And she understood the material on a primal level. She understood what it's like to be of this woman's girth. The rest....I had to take the experiences I had as a child and sort of pass them onto her and blow them into her ear so that we could find the truth onscreen."

But the journey to the truth took almost a decade, and as Daniels tells it, there was plenty of competition.

“The minute it came out, I read it and I stalked the writer for forever. And she’s a scholar, and she’s fancy-shmancy and she’s an auteur, in the pure sense, she did not want it basterdized on film. I stalked her – eight years – one of many, cause there were a lot of celebrities that were after her, a lot of studios after her. But she gave it to me.”

Watch the trailer

Gabby Sidibe and Mo'Nique in Precious
Gabby and Mo'Nique in a scene from Precious.

And, it seems, put her full trust into him to maintain the book's gritty imagery, honest tone and difficult scenes of abuse, although her blessing didn't alleviate all of his anxiety.

“Once [Sapphire] realized that it was a different medium, she signed something over, she was like, 'You know, I gotta trust the process'. I was very nervous when she came on-set, though. That’s the only time I became nervous. I wanted to do her book justice cause it touched me so.”

Along with the responsibility of bringing this best-selling novel to forceful, traumatic and ultimately uplifting life, came conflicted feelings borne out of sharing a socially and racially specific story with those who are not a part of the narrative.

“I did not know that this was going to be as universal as it was. I played it for my family – [they] loved it, crazy, happy. Played it for Sapphire – [she] loved it, cried in my arms. That was why I made this movie, anything else was gravy," revealed Daniels.

"Went to Sundance – all these white people, a sea of white people, responding and I’m like, ‘What the…?’ And I was a little annoyed that they got it. This is something really private to me. You’re looking into my world; you’re looking into something that is very private in African-American culture. You can see Obama, but you can’t see this. So I was floored. It’s a very humbling experience to connect to people on a universal place.”

And someone else who was famously interested in sharing the film’s inclusive tone of hard-earned hope was none other than Oprah Winfrey herself. (Check out what she had to say on the Precious red carpet )

The mega-influential talk show host, who can turn a nobody into a somebody with a simple, well-placed name-drop, joined the film as executive producer, although Daniels originally envisioned her on screen instead of behind the scenes.

“I was thinking of Oprah [for the role of Precious' mother] but we weren’t financed so nobody took us seriously, at that time. And when we got the money I then had committed to Mo’Nique. [Having Oprah as a producer] is cathartic - it’s great.”

Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire opens in select Cineplex theatres November 20.



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@tia_celeste - You never know! This might just be the role that gets it for him :) ^EB
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