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  • 1 week ago
Actress Tiffany Boone talks about becoming Gwen Fontaine, wife of Huey P. Newton. "It was really just me trying to search out any little line, anything about her that I could possibly find because she's a very private person."
Transcript
00:00In The Big Sicar, you play Huey Newton's wife, Gwen.
00:04Tell me, what was that preparation process for you when you were preparing for that role?
00:09Yeah, it was really just me trying to search out any little line,
00:14anything about her that I could possibly find because she's a very private person.
00:19And so there's no interviews.
00:21There's no, you know, there's a good two handfuls of pictures.
00:25And, you know, a lot of times I just have to read a bunch of stuff about Huey
00:29and hope that somebody would mention something about Gwen.
00:32So it was a lot of reading and research and trying to look for things.
00:35But also it was just trying to fill in the blank spots with Andre
00:40so that we could, like, make sure that she was full
00:43and their relationship had a full, you know, well-rounded thing for the show.
00:48So that's interesting that you said it, and filling in those blanks.
00:52You know, since you said she was really private
00:53and there wasn't a whole lot of information about her,
00:56how did you go about filling in those blanks?
01:00And, you know, how did you implement, I guess, your own style
01:04or your own little, you know, twist to the character?
01:07Yeah, I mean, for us, like, talking to Andre a lot,
01:11we were just really protective over their love story,
01:15just showing a Black love story like theirs, right?
01:19And so for me, filling in those gaps was like,
01:21I feel like it would be really easy to just be like,
01:23oh, Gwen was just, like, this ride-or-die chick
01:26who just, like, followed him around and, you know, told him yes whenever.
01:30And, you know what I mean?
01:31I think it's very easy to just be like, she was in love with him,
01:33so she just went to Cuba with him.
01:35But I think for us, it was, like, making it more complicated than that
01:38because it was.
01:40And I think even in the things that I read,
01:42people were like, she was the person that he could be himself with
01:46and who really saw him, and she didn't take any BS.
01:49So it was like, how do we fill that in?
01:51How do we make the balance between her being this really fierce woman
01:55who, like, you know, a lot of pictures you see of her,
01:58she's, like, looking like this at everybody, you know what I mean?
02:01But obviously, there was a softness there.
02:03She was a mother, and she loved him deeply.
02:05So we just tried to make sure that every scene,
02:09we can show a little bit of softness, playfulness, joy,
02:12and, like, the hard conversations they had to have.
02:16We'll see you next time.
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