*Janelle Monáe says filming the time-bending thriller “Antebellum” was quite a “triggering” experience.
In the film, the singer stars as a successful author who is stuck between present day and slavery in the 1800s.
During a recent conversation for The Hollywood Reporter’s Drama Actress Roundtable, Monáe noted that she “brought all of my ancestors home with me,” during filming.
“This is a project that is so of the times, and it was not going to be a yes for me because I knew the responsibility and the weight of it and I knew what this character was going to have to go through physically and emotionally,” she said.
“And we were filming most of the stuff at night on a plantation, and I felt everything. There were just certain conversations even at craft services that if I heard would be triggering for me. I couldn’t even talk to my family sometimes. It was kind of unhealthy when I think back. But, also, this past year, I filmed Antebellum, I went on tour and then I started Homecoming, so I didn’t have a break mentally,” Monáe added.
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Welcome to #Antebellum – in theaters August 21. pic.twitter.com/b2JB6dLRLB
— ANTƎBELLUM (@antebellumfilm) June 24, 2020
“And on top of that, I was dealing with mercury poisoning,” she said [which she contracted from consuming too much fish].
“I didn’t know I had it in Antebellum, but looking back at the footage, I used the disorientation and unraveling in my personal life onscreen.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Janelle dished about the Black experience in Hollywood.
“I’ve made it a point in my career to make sure that the world knows we’re not monolithic. We can do the math that gets men into space [the plot for Hidden Figures] and we can also be in the ghettos in Moonlight, and it was super important that those were the first roles I took,” she explained.
“Even in music, I’ve tried my best to walk my truth as a queer Black woman growing up in America and what that means. Representation is important. Our voices onscreen, our presence onscreen, it’s all super important,” she added.
“I’m also at a point where I want the freedom like all of my favorite actors who get an opportunity to do fantasy, sci-fi, drama, all these things. I want to see more scripts where you’re writing for the human, you’re not pushing me to be a stereotype of what you think Blackness is,” Monáe said.
Watch below the full roundtable with Jennifer Aniston, Zendaya, Reese Witherspoon, Helena Bonham Carter and Rose Byrne.
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