QUEEN LATIFAH NEWS, INTERVIEWS & UPDATES
News for 11/16/2003
Queen Latifah in Last Holiday Remake
Source: Variety
Paramount Pictures has fast-tracked a remake of the 1950 British comedy Last Holiday, with Queen Latifah set to play the role originated by Alec Guinness. The change in gender is being brought to life by writers Peter Seaman and Jeffrey Price, who wrote Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
The original film was based on a J.B. Priestley story. Guinness played an ordinary man who learns he will die shortly. He cashes in everything he owns and heads to a swank resort before punching out for good. Because he doesn't know how the wealthy behave, his manner confuses residents, who decide his eccentricity means he is super-rich and must be listened to.
The contemporized version will star Latifah as a shy, unassuming sales clerk who vanishes to a European resort upon learning of her diagnosis. Thinking she has nothing to lose, she becomes increasingly outrageous and irreverent.
Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith are set to play cops in an untitled actioner also being developed at Paramount.
News for 9/13/2003
'Cookout' Heats Up with Queen Latifah
By Chris Gardner
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Queen Latifah is grilling up "The Cookout."
Joining her in the Lance Rivera-directed Lions Gate Films project -- which Queen Latifah co-wrote with her Flavor Unit Films partner Shakim Compere -- is a roster including Quran Pender, Ja Rule, Eve, Jonathan Silverman, Jenifer Lewis, Meagan Good, Tim Meadows, Farrah Fawcett and Danny Glover.
"Cookout," which is before the cameras in New Jersey, stars Pender as Todd Anderson, a basketball star who becomes the No. 1 NBA draft pick. To celebrate, he organizes a "cookout" in his new mansion with his crazy friends and relatives.
Queen Latifah plays a supporting role as a security guard, with Ja Rule starring as Todd's friend Bling Bling, Eve as Todd's old high school girlfriend, Silverman as the superslick sports agent of the new NBA star, Lewis as Todd's mother, Goode as Todd's current girlfriend, Meadows as his uncle, Fawcett as one of the neighbors and Glover as a judge and the husband of Fawcett's character.
Queen Latifah, who was nominated for an Oscar for her supporting role in last year's "Chicago," appeared earlier this year in "Bringing Down the House." Her upcoming big-screen projects include "Scary Movie 3" and "Barbershop 2."
News for 8/4/2003
Queen Latifah gets small
By Ann Oldenburg
USA TODAY
If anyone should know about curves, it's Queen Latifah.
In April, the Oscar-nominated Chicago actress, 33, had breast-reduction surgery and went from "well over an E cup" to a double D, she says. And in the past year, she says, she has lost 25 to 30 pounds through exercise and "eating right."
It was all done for her health, Latifah said Wednesday, not because she was bowing to anyone's idea of body image.
Her mother has always been her role model. "She always told me I was beautiful." And "big breasts run on both sides of our family. It was normal."
But back pain forced her to consider surgery. "It took a year and a half to make that decision. It wasn't for confidence or image. I'm the anti-Hollywood girl. The more people encouraged it, the more I resisted it. I know a lot of people who run to the plastic surgeon for every little thing. But me? Don't touch my nose, my hips, my stomach."
And it was not an easy operation.
"It took a while to recover from," she says. "I don't encourage people to go get surgery. I think they often do it for the wrong reasons, thinking if they have breast implants or a nose job, it will make them feel better about themselves.
"They change their bodies but haven't dealt with their self-esteem."
Now the still-curvy actress is a spokeswoman for a new line of underthings called Curvation.
"It celebrates curvaceous women women who look like me," Latifah says. And the four new bras are a lot more comfortable that the "rocket missile" ones she wore in her youth, she adds.
She's urging participation in a Curvation contest celebrating strong women and says the company is contributing to the Lance Owens Foundation, her brother's charity, which provides scholarships for children.
The rapper/actress says she'll soon start filming Barbershop 2, in which she'll have a cameo to set up a spinoff called Beauty Shop.
Then she and Jimmy Fallon shoot Taxi, an action comedy.
But whatever she's doing, she says, "I'm still a big, pretty girl."
News for 7/12/2003
Pinkett Smith, Latifah in Action-Comedy
By Zorianna Kit
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith are attached to play police detectives in an untitled action-comedy set up at Paramount Pictures.
The plot line for the project is being kept under wraps. A screenwriter is expected to come aboard shortly, with an early winter start date already being eyed.
Pinkett Smith's husband, Will Smith, is on board as a producer via his Overbrook Entertainment banner. She most recently was onscreen in "The Matrix Reloaded" and will be seen in "The Matrix Revolutions" in the fall.
Latifah next shoots a cameo role in MGM's "Barbershop 2" to help establish her own potential franchise in the studio's "Beauty Shop." In the fall, she goes into production on 20th Century Fox's "Taxi."
News for 6/14/2003
Latifah Drives American Remake of Besson's 'Taxi'
HOLLYWOOD (Zap2it.com) – Queen Latifah ("Bringing Down the House") will be starring in an English-language remake of Luc Besson's 1998 comedy "Taxi" for Twentieth Century Fox. Tim Story ("Barbershop") is in negotiations to direct.
The story centers on a former pizza-delivery girl turned taxi driver (Latifah) who drives a cop around town trying to stop a group of bank robbers.
The original film spawned several successful sequels in France, "Taxi 2" in 2000 and "Taxi 3," released earlier this year. Besson will be producing the English-language remake, report trade press.
Latifah, who was nominated for an Oscar this year for her role in Rob Marshall's "Chicago," is about to begin shooting Kevin Rodney Sullivan's "Barbershop 2" opposite Ice Cube and Cedric the Entertainer. Her character in the movie will launch a spin-off film titled "Beauty Shop."
Production on "Taxi" is scheduled to begin this fall.
News for 5/12/2003
Latifah to Star in 'My Wife Is A Gangster' Remake
HOLLYWOOD (Zap2it.com) – Queen Latifah is in talks to star in the American remake of the South Korean action-comedy "My Wife Is A Gangster."
The hip-hop artist turned actress will take the lead role in the Miramax movie as a female mob boss who gets married to please her dying sister. She chooses an unsuspecting man who has no idea what he's getting into. Just as he starts to wise up, she starts to fall in love.
The movie currently has no director attached but the screenplay has been adapted by Marc Klein, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
It's been a big year for Queen Latifah who earned a best supporting actress nomination at the Oscars for her role in "Chicago" and saw her most recent film, the comedy "Bringing Down The House," do huge box office business.
News for 4/9/2003
Queen Latifah to Host 'VH1 Divas' Concert
NEW YORK - Queen Latifah will reign as host of this year's "VH1 Divas" concert, which will feature performances from Mary J. Blige, Jewel and Chaka Khan.
The show is scheduled to air live at 9 p.m. EDT May 22 from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Other scheduled musicians will be announced later.
While previous "Divas" shows have included duets, this year's will have even more of an emphasis on them. The concert series, now in its sixth year, raises money for VH1's Save the Music Foundation, which restores music programs in America's public schools.
Latifah, the 33-year-old rapper and actress who was nominated this year for a supporting-actress Oscar for "Chicago," stars in the comedy "Bringing Down the House" with Steve Martin.
News for 4/4/2003
Latifah Crowned "Beauty" Queen
News for 4/1/2003
Queen Latifah Opening Beauty Shop at MGM
MGM wants to open a new comedy franchise right next door to Barbershop with Queen Latifah as proprietor, producer and star of "Beauty Shop," reports Variety. Latifah is expected to be paid near the eight-figure mark for her services. Elizabeth Hunter (The Fighting Temptations) is in talks to write the film.
The studio would launch the new franchise with a Latifah cameo in "Barbershop 2" expected next winter, with her shop located next door to Ice Cube's convivial but financially challenged inner-city Chicago tonsorial parlor. That would set up her starring role in the spinoff, which would be developed at the same time.
Disney recently decided the Michael Elliot pitch "Just Wright" was just right for Latifah to produce and star in as a physical therapist who falls for the hoops star who hires her to help him heal in a hurry.
Other possible deals include a Luc Besson-produced Fox remake of French action comedy hit "Taxi." Latifah would play a cabbie whose driving skills are put to the test by a cop who needs transportation to prevent a heist in Manhattan.
News for 3/20/2003
The following article is from the April 2003 issue of Ebony Magazine. Click on the pics to read the article.
The following article is from the March 7, 2003 issue of Entertainment Weekly. Click on the pics to read the article.
News for 3/19/2003
Disney Holds Court for Queen Latifah
HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Disney has made a preemptive purchase of screenwriter Michael Elliot's pitch "Just Wright" as a starring and producing vehicle for Queen Latifah.
Oscar-nominated for "Chicago" and still perched atop the box office charts in Disney's "Bringing Down the House," the Queen will get to play the princess in a modern-day retelling of Cinderella set in the world of pro basketball.
Latifah will star as Janice Wright, a physical therapist drafted by an all-star basketball player to move in and help him recover from a career-threatening injury. The hoop star then begins to fall for his therapist.
Latifah and her Flavor Unit Films partner, Sha-Kim Compere, will produce with Debra Martin Chase.
"This idea came about as I watched Queen Latifah looking great as she walked down the red carpet at the Golden Globes and a woman in the group said, 'Why doesn't someone put her in a romantic comedy?'," Elliot said. "They don't usually give actresses like Latifah those films, but as I looked around the room, most of the women there didn't look like Halle Berry.
"It took Tom Hanks' clout to get 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' made, but (star) Nia Vardalos proved that you don't have to be Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan or Halle to appeal to the real women who identify with women like Nia or Latifah."
Elliot used basketball for his film's arena because it's an arena he knows well. His previous script credits include the romantic tale "Brown Sugar," the kids basketball fantasy "Like Mike" and the upcoming Malcolm Lee-directed street basketball film "The Rucker" at Universal.
"I'm from South Philly," he said. "So while I know that when parents of my white friends say they want their daughters to marry a professional, they mean doctors and lawyers. Where I come from, they want them to marry professional athletes because they are our princes."
News for 3/11/2003
Interview from the February 3, 2003 issue of People Magazine.
Latifah Is Queen of Screen -- But Music Is Her Main Love
By David Germain
LOS ANGELES — Queen Latifah seems to have flip-flopped from singer-who-moonlights-as-an-actor to movie-star-who-dabbles-in-music.
There's her Academy Awards nomination for supporting actress in the musical Chicago, and her first big-screen lead role, in the comedy Bringing Down the House, co-starring Steve Martin.
But Latifah hopes to return to musical mode later this spring with her first album in five years. The title, First Love, says it all about how she views her career priorities.
"Publicly, I would probably seem like I'm more an actress now than singer," she said in an interview. "But personally, nah. I'm always going to be music first. It's just in my heart.
"When I'm not working, I make beats in songs as a hobby. Some people will pick up a book or a magazine, read or watch TV or go to the movies. I'll go in the studio in my house and just make a beat. Or get on the guitar and play the two strings that I can and come up with a melody. That's just what I do."
When choosing movie roles, Latifah, who turns 33 this month, is drawn to tuneful projects. She had a scene-stealing role in last year's hip-hop romance Brown Sugar. And for Bringing Down the House, on which she is also an executive producer, she contributed a song and recorded a bonus track for the CD soundtrack.
Chicago was a chance to emulate screen idols such as Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Gene Kelly and Danny Kaye in musicals that Latifah, whose given name is Dana Owens, watched growing up in New Jersey.
Musicals were a welcome refuge for a girl whose parents divorced and whose tender nature prompted a cousin to nickname her "Latifah," an Arabic word meaning "sensitive" or "delicate."
"Once you start getting worldly enough, your mind develops enough for you to understand when your mother has that conversation about you being black, and that you're going to have to work twice as hard," Latifah said. "And that you're a female, so you're going to have to work twice as hard. And that there will be people who will come against you just on those two reasons, those two facts.
"That's a crushing thing to tell a kid. To introduce your child to the fact that you live in a world of racism is tough. So things like musicals were places you could escape to."
Latifah, who played Chicago's opportunistic prison matron, was the lone black acting nominee for this year's Oscars, after three black actors earned nominations last year. Halle Berry and Denzel Washington both won, the first time black actors swept the top acting prizes.
Some viewed Berry and Washington's wins as a sign that Hollywood finally was making a fair share of choice roles available to blacks. Others saw it as an aberration.
Latifah simply likes to think the best man and woman won.
"I looked at it as they both deserved those awards," she said. "But it's not the kind of thing I held on to, like, OK, we've made it. We've arrived. ...
"I think as long as there's racism in America, there's always going to be racism, period. As long as there's classism, then there's going to be classism across the board, which can translate into racism. I don't really look at it as everything has changed. I appreciate the nomination. I'm proud of what we did with Chicago. So I'm just going to go and enjoy the moment, you know?"
Her ascent to Oscar-caliber performer began with church choir gigs and school plays as a child. Her wide musical influences included jazz, rock, soul, gospel, doowop and reggae, along with movie musicals.
She made her first mark as a rapper recording singles in her late teens, when she added "Queen" to her stage name. She was hunting for a tag to set her apart from the many rappers adopting the initials "M.C."
"Everybody was M.C. this, M.C. that, and I didn't want to be known as M.C. Latifah," she said. "I had kind of been kicking around 'Queen' because I thought all women should carry themselves as queens, and if they felt that way about themselves, they wouldn't go for half the things they do. They wouldn't allow people to just treat them any kind of way. And they would feel prideful, respected. So I was like, yeah, queen. That sounds good.
"My mother was like, 'Queen? Who the queen? You're 17. I'm the damn queen.' But she trusted me, and I stuck with it, and it worked."
With her Afrocentric garb and regal presence, Latifah launched her career with the album All Hail the Queen in 1989. Three more records followed in the '90s, and the single "U.N.I.T.Y." earned her a Grammy for best solo rap performance.
Emil Wilbekin of Vibe magazine calls her "one of the foremothers of female rap."
"A lot of her music was very motivational, very grass roots, and she really took on this whole role as ... being this sort of Nubian queen, and being very strong," said Wilbekin. "I think she kind of represented real women, instead of the music-industry, cookie-cutter version of the female rapper."
She made her movie debut in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever in 1992, starred in the sitcom Living Single and was host of a syndicated TV talk show. Other movie credits include Set It Off, in which she played a bank robber, and Living Out Loud.
"I think Set It Off really showed everyone a different side of Queen Latifah, because she played a bad woman," Wilbekin said. "That was a real turning point for her because everyone thought of her as the big sister or the good friend."
Latifah also launched her own record label -- among her first acts was the Grammy-winning rap group Naughty By Nature -- and management company, Flavor Unit Entertainment. And she wrote the inspirational memoir Ladies First: Revelations of a Strong Woman.
In between, there were a couple of scrapes with the law. In 1996, she pleaded guilty to carrying a loaded firearm in a vehicle and driving without a valid license. In a separate case, she pleaded no contest in January to reckless driving. In both incidents, she was ordered to pay a fine and sentenced to probation.
In Bringing Down the House, Latifah plays a brassy prison escapee who upends the life of an uptight attorney (Martin), whom she enlists to clear her name. She came onto the project early, helping to shape the script.
Her Oscar nomination caps a 10-year slow build to gain clout as an actress.
"I guess I've been putting in my work, and people have kind of been waking up slowly," she said. "Your little hand, you've got to keep knocking on them, knocking, knocking, knocking, till they finally say, `What the hell is that?' and take a look."
Queen Latifah gets the royal treatment
By Kelly Carter
USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — As her star in Hollywood rises on the heels of Chicago's success, Oscar-nominated actress Queen Latifah spends hours poring over scripts these days. But the role she covets most is motherhood.
"I just need a couple more movies under my belt," says Latifah, 32, sipping matzo ball soup at the Four Seasons' restaurant. "I always wanted to adopt kids and have kids. I know I have to have a certain amount of time and energy."
Right now she's coast-hopping to promote Bringing Down the House, opening Friday. She executive-produced the comedy and plays a convict who meets Steve Martin, an attorney, on the Web. He's in for a shock when she shows up for a date.
Fresh off hosting the Grammys and Soul Train Music Awards, she'll host Saturday Night Live this weekend. Then she'll jet back to L.A. for Sunday's Screen Actors Guild Awards. She's up for best supporting actress.
No time for diaper-changing. The 5-foot-10 Cover Girl model has wanted a child since she was 18 but never could get the man part right. Now she's surfing the Internet and learning about adoption.
On Valentine's Day she hung out with her girlfriends, assistants and hairstylists. They piled in a rented 14-passenger van and headed to Houston's in Los Angeles, where they ate and drank.
"We had a ball," she says. "This is not the lonely-hearts club. We're not miserable. I'm happily single now. I'm very content with me. I'm a little wary about people now. It will take a while for somebody to earn me at this point. But it's all good. I flirt and have my fun and date a little bit, but as far as locking up, it's not going to happen."
The New Jersey native, born Dana Owens, splits time between her home close to the Jersey shore and another in Sherman Oaks, an L.A. suburb. Dressed in a black peasant blouse, jeans and black spike-heeled boots, she arrives at the restaurant in her shiny black Cadillac Escalade. No limo or Town Car for her, although Disney (Bringing Down the House) gladly would have provided one. A lot of studios are willing to do for her since Chicago's success and her nomination for a best supporting-actress Oscar.
"There are a lot of companies that really get me and are willing to change parts from male to female, to rewrite things with me in mind, to start things from scratch with me in mind," Latifah says.
She's yet to sign on for another project but is in meetings. Disney exec Nina Jacobson, whose studio recently bought a romantic comedy pitch from Latifah, says she has a few ideas for the star because of her versatility.
"There aren't very many people who have it all, and she does have it all," Jacobson says. "It took us a while to start finding stuff that felt right, but I think that's true for almost any woman in the business. I would do just about anything with her. People are just so ready to have a new face to celebrate."
Or as Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein says: "The Queen has it all: talent, intelligence and a voice that soars. She made Chicago red-hot."
Since Chicago, she has been flooded with musical offers. Although she's not eager to rush into another musical, she's intrigued by the idea of playing blues great Bessie Smith.
The Grammy-winning hip-hop artist hasn't forgottenher first love, music. Her new CD, First Love, is set for a June release, and she has two songs on House's soundtrack.
And at some point, she'd like to sing lullabies.
