Fit for a Queen
it had always been Jennifer Hudson’s dream to play Aretha Franklin on screen. By some crazy coincidence, the Queen of Soul had decided the actress would be the perfect choice to portray her in a planned biopic. While the former American Idol contestant was performing in a Broadway production of The Color Purple, she got a call from the music legend. “She said, ‘I’ve made my decision. It is you, young lady. I want you to play me,’” Hudson recalls to Total Film over Zoom from LA. Somehow, the stars had aligned.
Hudson’s long-gestating journey to becoming Franklin in first started in 2007, soon after she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her first-ever acting role in the lavish musical . They met in New York to talk about the project, Hudson shy and nervous as she sat in front of one of her music heroes. But it would be another nine years until the she would receive that fateful
