Janelle Monáe reflected on her multifaceted career at a Screen Talk hosted byBFI London Film Festival programmer Grace Barber-Plentie. The conversation,which took place ahead of the European premiere of “Glass Onion: A Knives OutMystery,” included the musician-actor citing Johnny Depp’s career as one she’dlike to emulate given the “transformative” characters he has played. Monáestressed that it was only Depp’s acting career that she admired, and not Deppas a person.
“When I think about careers, this person’s life as an actor, only… Johnny Depphas a very badass career,” Monae said, citing Willy Wonka and Sweeney Todd as“dramatic roles” she aspires to play in her own work. “Whatever the JanelleMonáe version of them is, maybe it’s something even better, I want to be ableto do those transformative characters that people are dressing up as forHalloween.”
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Monae also reflected on the notorious Best Picture mix-up at the 2017 Oscarsbetween “La La Land” and “Moonlight,” which marked Monáe’s feature actingdebut. She attended the 2017 Academy Awards with both “Moonlight” and “HiddenFigures,” in which she played NASA mathematician and engineer Mary Jackson.
At the Oscars ceremony, it was accidentally announced that Damien Chazelle’smusical “La La Land” had won best picture following an envelope mix-up, whichthen led one of the film’s producers to correct the mistake and invite thecast and crew of “Moonlight to the stage.
“It was the Twilight Zone,” Monáe recalled the infamous moment. “It definitelyfelt like a science fiction. When they announced the name and you had the ‘LaLa Land’ folks come up, and then we were just in the audience, I think we justalways felt like, ‘Wait, this is ours, is it not?’ And then it just felt crazyto snatch. It was a lot to consider.”
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She added of the aftermath: “Even backstage we really didn’t know if we weresupposed to be celebrating or not. It was just a weird feeling. It felt like aglitch in the Matrix.”
Discussing her growing film career, having also starred in “Harriet” and“Antebellum,” Monáe said she is “deliberate” about the fact that “the Blackexperience is not monolithic.” She explained of her two 2016 roles: “We can beat NASA, doing an equation, sending white men to space, Black women to space,we can be astronauts. We can be in the ghettos, taking care of young blackqueer children who are trying to make sense of life and who need a safespace.” The artist added that she believes “you can change people’sperceptions” and “remind people to further investigate”.
Monáe went on to say she is looking to center “more joy and more fun” in hercurrent and upcoming projects. She said many of her screen roles to date were“rooted in some deep stuff,” adding, “Race. Fighting against something. I’vebeen in this space where I’ve had to do a sort of retrospective of my life, ofwhat I’m requiring of myself, my team, my relationships. Right now, I’m themost free of opinions. This is the life experience I want to have and we’regoing to fucking create it.”
Throughout the conversation, Monáe acknowledged Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” as amajor influence on her career, as well as Tim Burton’s filmography(highlighting “Beetlejuice”) and Judy Garland in “The Wizard Of Oz.” In “GlassOnion”, Monáe plays Cassandra “Andi” Brand alongside a wide ensemble castincluding Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr. , Daniel Craig, Jessica Henwick,Edward Norton, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista and more. The film will receive aone-week limited theatrical release on Nov. 23, before dropping on Netflixglobally on Dec. 23.
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