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Why Naomi Ackie Almost Said No to Playing Whitney Houston in ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’ · Direct From Hollywood with Ryan Seacrest

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  Speaker 1: Direct from Hollywood with Ryan Seacrest. Naomi Aki stars as
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  Speaker 1: Whitney Houston in the new biopic I Want to Dance
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  Speaker 1: with Somebody, and playing any real person is challenging for
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  Speaker 1: an actor, but playing someone that everyone on earth is
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  Speaker 1: familiar with, like Whitney, is a far bigger task, and
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  Speaker 1: Naomi was well aware of that when the opportunity to
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  Speaker 1: audition first to rose. In fact, she tells Vanity there
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  Speaker 1: she almost passed on the chance, saying I was like,
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  Speaker 1: absolutely not, this is too big. But her team talked
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  Speaker 1: some sense into her, and when she got the job,
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  Speaker 1: that's when it dawned on her. Now she really had
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  Speaker 1: to embody the superstar, saying that took a long time
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  Speaker 1: to get my head around. The most challenging part of
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  Speaker 1: portraying Whitney Houston is portraying Whitney Houston. Our goal has
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  Speaker 1: been to celebrate Whitney for all that she was the
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  Speaker 1: song stress, the producer, actress, fashion icon, and the person.
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  Speaker 1: If anybody would be hard to impress, it would be
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  Speaker 1: the man who discovered Whitney, Clive Davis. But he's blown
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  Speaker 1: away by Naomi's portrayal. He says she had the big
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  Speaker 1: responsibility of bringing the full Whitney to the world, and
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  Speaker 1: she's the real deal. I want to dance with somebody
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  Speaker 1: in theaters Friday. That's direct from Hollywood.