00:00Hi, I'm Cori Murray, Entertainment Director with Essence TV, and we're at the Paramount
00:10Picture Screening Room watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
00:13Up next, our exclusive interview with Taraji Henson on making this magical movie.
00:18So tell us how did you get involved with this film?
00:20Well I get the script, and it's amazing, and I'm thinking, wow, whoever gets this is going
00:26to be very lucky.
00:27This is incredible.
00:28I didn't take it seriously because, you know, a lot of times in Hollywood you have a big
00:33studio film with big names attached, and normally they want to stick with names.
00:38So I thought they had an offer out to a big star, and they were just holding these auditions
00:44just as a backup plan.
00:46And I thought maybe if the nine girls ahead of me weren't available, then maybe I got
00:51a shot.
00:52So I was planning a garage sale.
00:54I mean, I was selling everything from the Rooter to the Tutor I think I put on the flyer.
00:57So then my agent calls and she's like, you better cancel that garage sale.
01:00I'm going to meet Fincher.
01:01So all night I'm tossing and turning like, who's going to be in the hallway waiting to
01:05go meet Fincher?
01:07When I get there, it's nobody but me, LeRae Mayfield, and Fincher.
01:11And by the time we finished the audition, he asked had I ever been in heavy prosthetics.
01:15I've been down that road before, too.
01:17I've had, oh, we'll see you next week on the set, and then next week comes, I'm like,
01:21um, hello?
01:22I didn't get a call time.
01:23And they're like, because so-and-so got the job.
01:25So it was two weeks after that I get the call and I got the movie.
01:29So tell us about Queenie.
01:30Who is she?
01:31Queenie, to me, is the embodiment of unconditional love.
01:35Because she's barren when the film opens, her love for humans is heightened because it's
01:41something that happens to a woman when she can't have children.
01:43She feels useless and worthless.
01:45But instead of Queenie falling prey to that, she still found her purpose in life.
01:50And I read that you learned a lot from Queenie by watching your own grandmother.
01:54So what did you draw from your grandmother to bring to Queenie?
01:56My grandmother has eight children, five of them women, one being my mom.
02:01And she had a get-together.
02:02And I just happened to be available to go because normally I'm never, I can never make it.
02:07So I just sat back and watched them.
02:09There was a woman there to represent every age I had to portray.
02:12They made it look like it gets better with time.
02:15My grandmother in particular, who's 84, she doesn't look as near as old as how they aged me at 71.
02:22Now in the film there's a lot of prosthetics you talked about.
02:25So what was that like dealing with the CG?
02:27Like you were mentioning like you were acting with Brad Pitt but he wasn't really there.
02:30When Queenie first discovers Benjamin Button, it's an animatronic baby,
02:34which took three puppeteers to operate off screen.
02:37And then they hired three different actors, three different sizes to portray Benjamin Button and the
02:41Benjamin Button at the different ages.
02:43And they had a blue sock on their heads with the faces cut out so I could see their faces.
02:47Great actors by the way.
02:48They gave me so much to work with.
02:50And X's and O's all over the blue cap.
02:52And I just, I went to the film and I was like okay I don't get it.
02:55I mean you told me I was working with Brad Pitt.
02:58Who are these people with these blue socks?
03:00I just, I couldn't, I was like what, how is this going to happen in the end?
03:03And he was like just, you just go do what you do and there's a whole team of people that's going to worry about that.
03:08Just action, go.
03:10What was it like working with David Fincher?
03:12I found him to be quite nurturing for a man.
03:15He cares about every aspect of filmmaking.
03:18He cares about the actors.
03:19He cares about extras.
03:21He was on the set talking to the extras.
03:23He's very meticulous, which I love.
03:25I'm a woman, you know how meticulous we can be.
03:27So he was speaking the same language to me.
03:29I would, you know, he does a lot of takes but you need a lot of takes for a film of this magnitude.
03:35There was not one moment rushed in this film.
03:37What do you hope audiences would take from it?
03:39You know, that's always a difficult question to ask because individuals are, people are going to take what they need from the film.
03:45But what I took from the film was, you know, we're just all passing through.
03:50No one's guaranteed today.
03:52No one's guaranteed tomorrow.
03:54And you just shouldn't live your life regretting.
03:57You should love as often as you can.
03:59There's this quote.
04:00I don't know who is the author of this quote.
04:03It says, work as if you don't need the money.
04:05Love like you've never been hurt and dance like nobody's watching.
04:09That means so much more to me now that I've seen this film and I've been a part of it.
04:13Because I lost my dad a year before filming.
04:16And I just couldn't understand.
04:18You talk about not knowing what's coming for you, like Queenie says in the film.
04:22That was a curve ball I couldn't see.
04:25And he was 58 when he died.
04:27And this film forced me to deal with it.
04:29So this was a film I actually needed to do.
04:32That's what I needed to do.
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