She did the work to get here.
How do you recreate the voice of one of the greatest singers ever?
For her transformation into jazz legend Billie Holiday,Andra Daythrew out the rule book.
She started smoking cigarettes.
She glugged “cold water and gin.”
She yelled and screamed all the time, leaving her vocal cords no time to rest.
The experience changed her.
“There’s still some residual Billie,” Day says with a throaty laugh.
“Parts of her will always be with me.”
Starring debuts rarely come this big, and Day didn’t entertain the opportunity at first.
(“Hell no” was her initial reaction.)
DirectorLee Daniels(Empire) didn’t see her in the movie either.
Their managers thought they’d click, though, and persuaded them to get together.
“We sat in the meeting like, ‘Why are we here?'”
“‘I don’t think you’re going to be good.’
‘I don’t think I’m going to be good!'”
It’s a significant cultural reframing that would weigh heavily on any actor.
to her laugh “a pinging, [like] it’d come back and hit against something.”
Still, the screen novice had to navigate an unfamiliar process.
The scene: a sold-out Carnegie Hall concert.
The number: “Ain’t Nobody’s Business if I Do.”
She sang her heart out.
The crowd (and crew) roared.
She’d done it.
And then she had to do it again.
“We did it, like, 800 million times,” Day deadpans.
It was all a lesson for me."
“Performing it was traumatic and healing at the same time,” Day says.
“I’m a Black woman living in America, and that has its own set of traumas.
[And] a lynching is a horrific, horrific sight.
It is very much in the fabric of American culture.”
Day gained clarity from facing that reality head-on.
But this all being so new, she struggled to shake it off.
“[For me], coming off set felt impossible.”
So much so that she sometimes can’t imagine doing anything like it again.
“I really love her,” Day says.
“I loved having her in me.
And I loved being in her.”
The United States vs. Billie Holidaybegins streaming on Hulu this Friday.
