By Angela Harden
As seen in Issue #5
There’s a drawl that pulls on certain words when Taraji Henson speaks, but it’s hard to tell if it’s an East Coast thing or West Coast thing, since the Washington, DC, native has lived in L.A. for five years now. But she’s friendly in a Southern way—free with details of her life and struggles.
She recently co-starred opposite Tyrese in John Singleton’s Baby Boy. Her character, Yvette, works to support her child while Jodi (Tyrese), the kid’s father, runs the streets in her car. Talk about harsh.
For Henson, playing Yvette was cathartic. Yvette’s relationship with Jodi was almost identical to the one she had with an ex. “Sometimes when I was reading the script I had to put it down and walk away... I’ve had some of the exact conversations that Yvette had, [so] I didn’t have to do research. I would go into my personal photo album and pick out pictures of my life with my ex and just by looking at a picture it would get me there,” she says.
The difference between her ex and Jody, she points out, is that Jody isn’t mean-spirited. In Henson’s personal experience, the threat of physical violence muzzled her spirit. “There were times when I couldn’t really express what I was feeling. So by playing Yvette, it gave me a chance to really say things that I couldn’t say back then.”
And apparently do things she couldn’t do. Tyrese and Henson’s audition scene was of a heated argument, and the nervy actress got so emotionally charged that she hit Tyrese with a pillow and jumped on his back. “When he got up and raised his hand,” she says, “I really ran for my life because I thought he was gon’ hit me for real.”
One very important onlooker was impressed with how the two lost themselves in the scene. “It was just like this girl is wild, man,” says John Singleton. “She captured the emotion, and the heart and soul of the character. By the end of the audition, everybody was clapping and cheering and jumping up and down. We were just like, ‘She’s the perfect one; she’s the character, man.’ So basically right then and there we were like, "You got the role.”
Henson may see herself in Yvette, but don’t think she’ll let herself be typecast. She’s proven that she can be versatile. She’s portrayed everything from a valley girl on Felicity, to a wicked teenage witch in Aaron Spelling’s Satan’s School For Girls, to a runaway slave in the CBS Murder She Wrote movie, The Last Free Man. But the journey from sitcom bit parts to the silver screen wasn’t an easy one. In fact, just moving to L.A. to pursue her acting dream was gutsy.
Somewhere in the midst of studying theater at Howard University and working two jobs, Taraji’s life got complicated. A long-term relationship ended and she was left with a child. “So many people have been in my situation, where they had a kid and they let it ruin their lives. But I looked at my baby as a blessing. When I moved to L.A. five years ago, all I had was my son [and] $700...”
She worked as a temp and a substitute teacher while pursuing acting on the side. She says that, like everyone else, she got turned down for 95 percent of the roles she auditioned for. Eventually she hooked up with director Vincent Cirrincione, who also manages Halle Berry. He says he wasn’t interested in taking on Henson as a new client, but he was blown away by her monologues.
“What’s special about Taraji,” says Cirrincione, “is that she knows who she is as a person and she brings that to a role. All I do is try to get the right opportunity for her and when she gets it she steps up to the plate.”
Continued in Issue #5
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