Gabourey Sidibe Breaks Down Her Most Iconic Characters

I want to be able to build a bridge

for marginalized people.

Because at some point in history,

if someone that looked like me was on TV,

we were a maid or a slave.

That has evolved and because I have evolved,

it is my duty to make sure that

other marginalized people get to evolve as well.

Now that I understand that and now that I'm in my agency,

I don't see any reason to turn back

and I don't [beep] have to.

[upbeat music]

It's a weird story, actually, how I got the role.

First, five years before I auditioned,

my mother was given the book Push

and she was asked to audition for the role of the mother,

which went on to be played by Monique.

Cut to five years later,

I had done a bunch of plays at Lehman College

and the film was going there to audition.

And so a friend of mine called me and said,

They're looking for someone that looks like you.

I ended up going to the audition,

got the call back for the next day, which was Tuesday.

I did that and then on Wednesday I got hired

and then we shot three weeks later.

And then in a year and a half, I was nominated for an Oscar.

So that's a weird way of becoming an actor.

I think it's kind of strange and I didn't really do it

on purpose, but it's probably a good thing.

It was good for me that my mom said no to doing it.

That would have led to some very awkward

Thanksgiving dinner moments for us, I believe.

But getting into the character was, you know,

this girl Precious, she couldn't read,

she was way behind other students

and she didn't necessarily fit in

and she's being abused at home.

She's made fun of away from home.

There was no rest and no safety for her.

And I think that I was able to connect to that.

Not that I was being abused or living anywhere

near a life that Precious was, but I understood hurt

on a very human level that I think we all can,

we can all empathize with pain in a way.

And so all I had to do was sort of center in on that pain

and remember the things that were painful for me

and just give it to this character.

And you had that smirk on your face, bitch.

Get out the [beep] here.

Now, smile about that.

Smile about that, you fat bitch.

Bitch!

[feet pattering]

I had a best friend growing up,

who her mother was schizophrenic

and she had been through quite a bit of abuse

and she was in therapy at six years old.

I kind of performed as Precious for my friend.

I thought, oh, this is the character

she needs to be able to see herself on screen somewhere.

And so that's what I was trying do most.

The good thing about it being my first role

was that I didn't really have time or wherewithal

to really think about the impact of the character.

I knew that someone would relate to this film.

I don't think I realize the actual impact.

People would see me in the street

and they would come up to me and tell me about how

the movie helped them go through and heal from their abuse.

They would tell me their stories about how

they were victims of incest

and now after seeing the film

they've decided to become survivors.

And that's not something I thought was going

to be possible with this character,

but I think at this point, it's pretty clear

that what I think doesn't matter to the universe.

And so thankfully, a lot of people did find healing

in Precious.

Any bit of sort of hardship that I felt

either playing the role or before the role

feels like it was worth it.

If someone can watch the performance and watch the film

and figure out a way to heal themselves,

that's the dream, I think.

[upbeat music]

I loved American Horror Story.

[Gabourey giggling]

I thought the first season was the best thing

I'd ever seen on TV.

And so when I got the call from Ryan,

[Gabourey giggling]

Ryan Murphy to take the role of Queenie,

I was overjoyed.

I was over the moon.

I really, really loved it.

And it was like witches,

and I love witches,

like I really love spookier things.

The thing about like spooky things is

like a vampire or werewolves or witches,

the only thing that you can actually really become

is a witch.

[Gabourey giggling]

You know, like it's not as easy to become a vampire

or a werewolf.

Ryan's on the phone with me and he tells me,

So you're a human voodoo doll.

So anything you do to yourself,

another person you can feel.

And I was like, Sold, stop selling.

I got it, I'm there.

Buy my ticket.

I think one of the first tricks I did was

I stabbed myself in the back of the hand with a fork,

it might've been a knife, whatever it was,

but they built a hand, they took my hand,

they took pictures of my skin color and everything

and they built a hand on top of my hand.

But in between the hand that they built and my own hand,

they put like a steel plate with holes in it.

And the fork that they gave me was magnetized.

So all I had to do was this

and then the fork would find the holes.

[plates rustling]

[girl screaming]

Stop it, you bitch!

Stop what?

I don't feel nothing.

I'm a human voodoo doll.

And it looked like I stabbed myself and it was incredible.

And I was like, this is gonna be so fun.

And it was.

It was really, really a lot of fun to be a witch,

especially in New Orleans and to get to learn

how to do magic, in that movie magic, I guess.

[upbeat music]

Lee Daniels, who directed Precious my first film,

he was like, I just wrote a script for a TV show

and I want you to read it and I want you to tell me

what you think of it.

He had me read the script

and I was like, Yeah, this is cute.

Like this is good.

Congratulations, Leni. which is what I call him.

And then he said, Well, girl, if you want,

you can have that role of Becky.

Becky originally was a

small, petite and frail white woman,

I love taking white people's jobs.

And so,

[Gabourey giggling]

he was like if you want Becky,

which was more or less kind of like a...

I think she was just like a throw away kind of character.

I don't how much thought was actually

put into Becky before I became Becky.

It just seemed like a fun little project to do.

I had never shot in Chicago

and that's where we shot the pilot.

And I was like cool.

I usually sign up to things that I think will be fun.

I think Becky got sort of bigger as the seasons went on,

there were six seasons and like fun fact,

I've never had a job for that long.

Even before I was an actress,

I worked in an office for three years

and that's the longest job I'd ever had.

And so Empire was like double that.

What's great is I could see my character evolve

and I see her grow and I see her style sort of changes.

And that was really, really, really, really fun.

Where Becky began, there are definitely episodes

where I didn't even talk.

I was just like a very overpaid extra.

To then at the very end of the series,

opening my own record label with Giselle

played by Nicole Ari Parker.

Your assistance tells me that you're setting up

Yana stage concept for the music weekly show.

I completely disagree Becky.

I know you don't have to agree.

You know, Yana's contract is with Bossy and that's me.

It was really interesting to see this character evolve

and grow, and I grew and evolved right with her.

But there's as I'm playing this character,

as I'm working at this place

and not just like this place is in Empire,

like working at Fox and like working at the studio

and working with these people for six years,

I grew as a person and I step more and more

into my own agency.

By the end of the series,

I directed two [beep] episodes because I'm dope.

So I'm not just an actor.

I was also directed two hours of that show

which is incredible.

I had no idea that that's at all what I was gonna do

with my life and my career.

[upbeat music]

Antebellum was a thrill ride.

I loved the script, I really loved it.

One, it's written beautifully.

Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz

who are the co-directors and co-writers,

they're extremely talented.

And the way that they were so careful

with what we would see,

I knew that it was going to visually be spectacular.

So the lead character is dealing with a lot of slavery.

Honestly, being a slave is terrible.

I don't need to list all the ways

in which being a slave is terrible for you.

I feel like you know and if you don't know,

you're probably a Trump supporter.

However, she's going through quite a bit.

And my portion of the film

I played Dawn, we're just at dinner

and we're like walking through hotels

and we're doing speeches.

We're very cute girls out on the town.

Here's how that makes sense.

I had gone to Ghana.

We had a lot of fun in Ghana,

but the one very serious thing we did

is we went to a slave castle.

There are four major slave ports in Africa,

Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast.

I'm actually Senegalese.

In Ghana, at their slave castle,

literally on the bottom it's jails

and dungeons and darkness

and anger and hate, and up top there's a beautiful castle.

That's where the enslavers lived.

Slaves were kept there for

three months before walking through the door of no return.

Before they were slaves, they were African.

They were just African people.

They were an African society.

And the door of no return is what turned them into a slave.

They walked through that door, they get on the boat,

they come to America and then that's that.

And what's unfortunate is we think that the beginning

of blackness, especially here in America,

is slavery, and it's not.

The beginning of blackness is way, way, way, way, way

before slavery.

Before we were slaves, we were Africans and we were mothers

and we were fathers and we were teachers

and we were doctors and we were an entire society.

Now, I say all that to say,

the part that I play as Dawn, is I am the society.

I'm the society that is going to miss the slaves.

I'm the part that is left behind.

I'm the one hole, the hole that's missing and wants back.

And also I'm the piece that the slave

needs to find their way back to.

I know there's a lot to think of,

it might be very far away of a concept if you're not black

and truly understand really the degradation of slavery

and not just that, but the imprint of it.

Like I was born in 1983, Brooklyn, I've never been a slave.

However, my dad is Senegalese and my mother

is from the South.

My mother's people, who she was born from,

were actually taken from my father's people.

After my parents got married, they did a blood test

and realized that they were actually of the same family.

And that's what slavery does.

Slavery takes away.

It takes you from your society and it steals you.

And it steals every bit of joy and every bit of hope

and mixes you up, and you don't know where you belong.

My mother who was born in 1952, Georgia,

had no idea that she belonged to Senegal.

Her destiny was interrupted.

Slavery is an interruption.

That's what it was.

It's among other things, it's an interruption.

And so Antebellum is really about the

interruption of slavery and the imprint of it

and how we still deal with it today.

And you know what's [beep] up,

to this day there like civil war re-enactments.

What are you re-enacting?

You lost!

It's so stupid!

Why are we wistful for this moment

where black people for 400 years were under the thumb,

it's bananas!

Now, I don't know if I'll ever be a slave,

and it's certainly not the dream of most black actors

to play slaves, but we get those roles quite a bit.

And this is the one time I didn't have to be a slave.

But I absolutely am involved

with a film that is about slavery.

[upbeat music]

Tower Heist was gigantic for me.

Honestly, it was my third audition ever.

Brett Ratner, who directed the film.

He had me read and I did it and then he said,

Do you think you can do an accent?

I had done an episode of SNL,

in one sketch I had a Jamaican accent.

And so I said to him no.

Can I do a Jamaican accent?

No.

Go watch SNL and see that I can't do it.

And he was like, Let's just try it, let's just try it.

And so I did and he liked it

and they got me a dialect coach.

The thing is my best friend growing up was Jamaican.

And her mom had a very thick Jamaican accent.

The accent wasn't actually really hard for me to get,

what I did run into trouble with though on set,

my accent was too Jamaican.

And so Brett couldn't understand me.

And he made me dial it back

and I've never been more pissed about anything.

I had to do less of a Jamaican accent

so that he can understand me.

And it was like why can't you just figure out

how to understand me, I'm doing this correctly.

But now I had to...

'Cause like what was pissing me off

was that I knew the Jamaicans that I know,

that know I can do the Jamaican accent,

would be disappointed.

I knew that people that didn't know

that I can do the Jamaican accent but know Jamaican accent,

would be disappointed.

And it transferred to like shaggy one day,

was doing some interview about Americans

doing Jamaican accents and they rated my accent,

and he was like...

And there was a one thing, so like...

Okay, I'm very upset.

So the line was something about like,

I have to go to the store,

something I go, me I go to the store.

And he didn't understand that.

He was like, Change it to I.

And I was like, No, but it's me.

And he's like, Yeah, but just change it to I.

And that's the thing that shaggy pointed out.

I know you're a good man Mr. K,

even though you're ruined my life.

That goddamn sentence!

So I was like, I tried.

I was fighting for it but they didn't understand me.

And it's like...

It's like ghett culture, Brett.

I really tried to argue.

I was like, Listen, you're gonna [beep] up

in the Jamaican community, okay.

I can't go into Golden Krust, having given this

watered down Jamaican accent.

How am I ever going to go get curry goat again?

One day I'll let it go.

My therapist says I need to let it go.

And she's right.

[Gabourey giggling]

That sounds really shady.

I actually did have a lot of fun.

I love...

I had a lot, a lot of fun, actually.

I had a really good time on that set.

[upbeat music]

The Big C was actually my second audition.

My first one was Precious,

the second one was Big C

and the third one was Tower Heist.

So, for a bit, I was like pulling off the hat trick.

I'm told that that's a sports term, I don't know.

But The Big C was the first time that

I was actually growing as a character,

becoming something different and changing,

and I didn't have the whole story.

You know, when you're doing TV,

you don't actually have the whole story.

You don't know it because it's not ended yet.

And it stared Laura Linney

and Oliver Platt and John Benjamin Hickey.

And it was such an incredible ride.

I respected Laura Linney so much, you know,

she was the helm, she was the leader of the show.

Everyone that came in, she would greet them.

If we were with a bunch of extras,

she would shake their hands and look them in the eye.

And it's not that I didn't do that

because I think I'm better than other people,

I actually am really, really shy.

Having once been a child, I think that everyone hates me.

And I think that most people don't want to interact with me.

And so I just assumed that.

Watching Laura interact with people

sort of made me feel like I needed to do that too.

That I needed to put away all the things that

you learn about yourself in junior high.

I was still holding onto that

and I knew that I had to be more like Laura

'cause that junior high Gabby didn't exist anymore.

It really was cool because you have to remember

like it was my third audition.

I've never been to acting class.

I don't technically know what I'm doing.

I'm just sort of moving off instinct

and my own understanding of things.

But I don't have like a technique in place

of like if you need to cry, you do this.

And if you're a villain,

then these are the things that you do.

And if you're a good person then these are...

Like, I don't have any of that.

And so my school, my teaching came from The Big C

more than anything.

I had to go through that sort of growing process

while on set, which isn't always great.

[Gabourey giggling]

I don't think it's always great.

But I feel like I survived that show

and I felt like I learned a lot from that show.

It helped me to understand what TV is

and how to do TV, because TV is different than film.

And also like I was learning

about the kind of comedy I wanna do

and the kind of comedic actress I want to be.

I really feel like The Big C helped me shape that.