Lifetime’s Whitney could upset Houston’s diehard fans with its unsparing portrait of their relationship.
Angela Bassett directing YaYa DaCosta in Whitney.
Lifetime
For a long time, among Whitney Houston's fans and sympathizers, the accepted narrative of her relationship with R&B singer Bobby Brown was that Brown was the miscreant who led a formerly angelic singer down a dark, drug-fueled path.
Eventually, a different version of their relationship that's more sympathetic to Brown emerged — which is the interpretation in actor and first-time director Angela Bassett's Lifetime movie Whitney, which premieres Jan. 17. Viewers will see Houston abusing drugs before Brown even comes into the picture; in this retelling of their relationship, Houston is the one who leads Brown into harder drugs.
But for Bassett, this portrayal of their relationship simply serves to more accurately set up the beginning of the central, complicated narrative of Houston's life — and the one she and producers chose to focus on in this biopic, which stars former reality TV show model YaYa DaCosta as Houston.
"When I came aboard, the story was a five-year period through the wonder years of their careers, where they both were very successful, and popular, magnetic, charismatic, entertaining. It's all beautiful — that first blush of love," Bassett said in an interview with BuzzFeed News, speaking of the beginning of Houston and Brown's courtship in the late '80s.
That's perhaps an optimistic view of a tumultuous on-again, off-again relationship that was fueled by drug abuse, 911 calls, uncomfortable TV interviews, and tabloid covers. By the '90s, Houston and Brown were the frequent butt of jokes on Saturday Night Live and MadTV, and the 2005 Bravo reality series Being Bobby Brown showed a couple whose relationship was on its last legs.
But Bassett said she wasn't particularly interested in what came later. "You get an indication of what is to come," she said of her film. "We all know how the story ends. We didn't need to visit that here."
DaCosta
Lifetime
