Taraji P. Henson Interview, Benjamin Button

MoviesOnline sat down with Taraji P. Henson to talk about her new film, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” directed by David Fincher from a screenplay by Eric Roth based on the 1920s story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards.  Starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett with Henson, Tilda Swinton, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas and Julia Ormond, “Benjamin Button” is a grand tale of a not-so-ordinary man and the people and places he discovers along the way, the loves he finds, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time.

When Benjamin’s mother dies in childbirth, his father, horrified at his appearance, abandons the baby on the steps of Nolan House, a retirement home where he is taken in by Queenie, the home’s caretaker. Taraji P. Henson was pegged for the role of Queenie long before the film came to fruition, when Fincher’s casting director, Laray Mayfield, steered the director toward her performance in “Hustle and Flow.” “We were all taken with how alive and maternal she was,” Fincher recalls. “I found all the warmth, all the non-judgmental aspects of Queenie, in Taraji.”

Queenie does a job many people could never do. “She’s a woman who knows how to deal with death,” says Henson. “And, at the same time, she is the embodiment of unconditional love. To be able to take in a child that’s not yours, at a time when racism is the norm, and he’s white and has been born under these unusual circumstances – she is able to look past all that and love him.”

The character spoke to Henson on an intensely personal level. “It’s been a very spiritual journey for me,” she reveals. “I had just lost my father, and even though I miss him dearly, it’s almost as if his death was a part of my journey towards Queenie. When my father was sick, we made sure that he was never alone; someone was always at his bedside. He passed away while I was with him because he knew I could handle it. This role helped me through my grief and my grief helped shape my performance. Art can be very healing.”

Taraji P. Henson turns in a wonderful performance in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and we really appreciated her time. Here’s more of what she had to tell us about her new movie:

MoviesOnline: How did you become involved in this?

TARAJI P. HENSON: I found out that God has a wicked sense of humor and you have to be specific when you ask for things you want out of life because he’ll throw you a curve ball. I had a list of actors I wanted to work with. Of course, every actor does. And Brad was certainly at the top. I was thinking something sexy, but I wasn’t specific when I asked and God said, “Okay, here, you can play his mama.” And, on top of that, they put me in a lumpy fat suit and wrinkled skin. Thank you very much!

MoviesOnline: When you first heard the idea, that must have made you scratch your head a little in terms of how are you going to play his mother when he’s older than you are?

TARAJI P. HENSON: Well, he’s quite older than me. (Joking) I’m only 19. I was like, “How are they going to do this?” I knew it was going to be prosthetics because I remember when I finally did have a chance to sit down with Fincher during the auditioning process and he asked me had I ever worked in heavy prosthetics before, so I knew that. I was actually looking forward to that. How many chances do you get to do that? How many opportunities? And so that was exciting. I just remember initially when I got the script, I thought “Wow, how bold! How are they going to pull this off?” Bold writing, Eric Roth, kudos for taking chances and taking risks and not writing stereotypical characters. Bold in David directing. Bold in Brad Pitt playing not such a glamorous role in the beginning, but some kind of way he pulls it off. I consider myself a risk taker when it comes to the craft and I like making bold choices and I was like “Wow, I would love to be a part of this,” but I honestly didn’t think I had a shot. I took the audition seriously because all I was hoping for was to go in and make an impression on Laray Mayfield who brilliantly put this movie together. Hopefully, Fincher would see the tape and maybe they would remember me and bring me back for something else. I just knew they had an offer out to a big name and they were holding these auditions as a back-up plan just in case and maybe I was like number 10 on the list, you know. I didn’t find out until later that Laray had me in mind from the very beginning because she saw “Hustle and Flow.”

MoviesOnline: You mentioned the boldness of writing something like this and then having David be able to create it and turn it into the technological achievement that it is. I don’t think the technology calls attention to itself, but I wonder how apparent that was when you were making the film?

TARAJI P. HENSON: When you first meet Benjamin Button, he’s an animatronic baby and it took three puppeteers to operate it from off the set. The apparatus they used looked like a remote control for cars or boats. They would make this creature wink at me in between takes. It was so bizarre. Yeah, there it was with the wires hanging out of its butt so that’s what we worked with in the beginning. Then, as he gets older, actually younger, it’s so confusing, they hired three incredible actors to portray Benjamin at these different ages. What Fincher did was he made sure that Brad and the three actors, they had the same concept of who Benjamin Button was so that when Brad later did his work in post, it would match what these different actors were acting opposite of. And they had blue ski masks but without the face so we could see their faces. It’s so confusing. It really is. I really couldn’t grasp the concept because I’m on the set acting opposite this guy with a blue sock on his head. I’m like, “Fincher, what are we doing here? I mean he has a blue sock on his head. Where’s Brad Pitt? How is this going to work?” And he was like, “You know what, just act. We have a whole set of people, that’s their job to figure out. You just do what you’re doing.” I didn’t know, and then I see the final product, and because I was there, I know where to look for the seams. Seamless! I’m like, “It has hair?” It was a blue sock. Does anyone understand? It has hair and you can see the pupils dilating. This is crazy! (laughs)

MoviesOnline: I figured it had to be something like that because, you’re right, it’s seamless. We don’t see the technology. You think about it afterwards.

TARAJI P. HENSON: Fincher was very adamant about that. He did not want to make some technology-driven fantasy film. He didn’t want any of that to upstage the story. I just think he was the perfect director for a film of this magnitude because he made it real and in order for people to accept Benjamin Button and to be able to sit down and suspend their disbelief, it had to feel real. Otherwise, people would go, “Nah, I don’t believe that.” I think he was good at that. When he sat us all down, he told us everything that the movie wasn’t so that we could see the reality. I mean, I must say when I read it, I just saw all of this magical stuff and that’s not what it was at all. I mean, it was but it wasn’t in your face. It kind of was happening but it takes you by surprise.

MoviesOnline: Your character has to suspend her disbelief,  how do you as a performer make the choice as to the level at which you acknowledge how strange this is and how much you just let go? You accept him very quickly as your son and then after that it’s just a part of life. As an actor, how do you decide how much you react to that?

TARAJI P. HENSON: I knew everything was riding on how Queenie responded to that baby. If Queenie didn’t fall in love with that baby immediately, we lose the audience.  So, I knew as an artist that was the most important part of Queenie actually, that moment right there. I took that very seriously. And the reason why she was able to do that – I just think it was so bold that Eric made this character African American in the early 1900s where racism is rampant in America, I just thought that was so bold. And it just speaks about unconditional love because when you love like that, you don’t see race, you don’t see handicap, you don’t see anything. All you feel is driving you inside – this passion and this love. That’s who Queenie is. I mean, think about it. She is used to taking in the unwanted.  She runs an old folks home, and unfortunately, what happens to so many elderly is that they get passed off to other people and no one comes to visit them and she understands that every human deserves unconditional love. I think in a way she feels like that’s her calling. I mean, she can’t even have her own children when the movie opens so that’s her gift to life. On this journey, it’s to give love to whoever crosses her path. So, it’s unfortunate that everybody who’s around her is dying. So when she comes across Benjamin Button, he represents life, he represents a chance for her to be a mom. He’s a new scent in the house, freshness. He looks old but he’s still a baby and how dare someone throw life away like that. How dare! That’s why when he comes back and tells her he found his daddy, she says “He what! He left you on my doorstep! Now he wants to come back in to your life?! No, I don’t think so.” But even in that anger she still finds a way to forgive him. I’m talking about Thomas Button, the biological father.

MoviesOnline: The original story is set in Baltimore. I thought the choice of moving it to New Orleans was inspired in particular because of something you just mentioned which is Queenie is a black woman and at the time this is being told, racism was rampant. Wasn’t New Orleans one of the few places in the country where there was more relationship between people of different races?

TARAJI P. HENSON: You know, in my research what I found because I always thought that too. I always thought New Orleans was this kind of place where race was not an issue but it actually was still. The only place really where you could let your hair down and mix races was in the French Quarter. Outside of the French Quarter, it’s still very weird. We’re still in the South. Outside of the French Quarter, it was the black over her and the white over there, but you could go to the French Quarter and it was like, “Shhh! C’mon, it’s okay here. Anything that happens in the French Quarter stays in the French Quarter.”

But what I love is we really never dealt with race and that’s my point. The driving force of this film is the unconditional love. When Daisy and Benjamin Button first meet, it’s undeniable. It’s unfortunate that the past keeps coming and coming and they can never get it right and then finally they get it right but the love was never lost. Even when Queenie dies, she doesn’t make any excuses when she prepares Benjamin. He understands life and death. He knows it’s inevitable. But what lives on is her love through him. Love is everlasting. Love will be here long after we’re all gone. My only hope is that each and every human really experiences it before they leave this earth.

MoviesOnline: Is there anyone else on your list that you’d like to work with in the future?

TARAJI P. HENSON: I would like to work with George Clooney and I want it to be a hot love, sexy relationship. No, I have a long list. I don’t want to bore you. It’s really long, a lot of people.

MoviesOnline: What do you have coming up next? Didn’t you just do a video with Jamie Foxx?

TARAJI P. HENSON: Oh yeah, I did this video and Brett Ratner directed. I don’t really get into the habit of doing videos but this was so juicy. It was based on an SNL comedy sketch and I love comedy and I don’t think the industry knows that I’m really funny. I get these serious roles. But it’s fine and I’m not complaining. It’s based on a series of vignettes from an SNL comedy sketch. It’s really, really fun – me, Jamie Foxx and directed by Brett Ratner. It’s his first single off his album that’s due in stores December 16th.

Next, I have a film on January 9th starring myself and Morris Chestnut. It’s called “Not Easily Broken” and it’s based on a best-seller by T.D. Jakes. That film means a lot to me because it’s about relationships and how sometimes outsiders can affect your union and how you need to keep them just where they belong, on the outside. Because what they do is they project how a relationship can be tested and tried and what does it take to stay and what does it take to walk away, you know.

And then I did a film called “The Hurricane Season.” I can’t get away from Katrina. And that’s based on Hurricane Katrina and it’s Forrest Whitaker and I play his wife. It’s actually based on a true story about this coach who after Katrina was able to rebuild this school, get a team together, and go on and win a championship. It’s a really good film.

MoviesOnline: Working with Forrest must have been a wonderful opportunity as well.

TARAJI P. HENSON: Yes, he’s just…what can you say? That’s a class act. That man has such a presence. It’s undeniable. I remember seeing some of the footage and it was just his silhouette. You couldn’t even see his face. And just the way he walked down that hallway, I was riveted. (laughs) 

MoviesOnline: Are you going anywhere interesting for the holidays?

TARAJI P. HENSON: Home. I don’t have any dresses to fit in after this is over so I can eat whatever I want.

MoviesOnline: Just remember that fat suit! It’s Awards season.

“The Curious Tale of Benjamin Button” opens in theaters on December 25th.