E-mail a friendAnika Noni Rose
airdate April 23, 2009
Broadway audiences know Anika Noni Rose as the Tony-winning actress in Caroline, or Change. She also hit Hollywood with a splash in the big-screen version of Dreamgirls. Rose caught the acting bug in high school and, after earning a degree from Florida A&M and her MFA from the prestigious American Conservatory Theater, moved to New York to pursue her career. She co-stars in HBO's new series, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and is making history as Disney's first-ever Black princess in The Princess and the Frog.
Broadway star comments on learning about the country of Botswana for her role in a new HBO series. (2:10)
Full interview. (14:06)
Anika Noni Rose
Tavis: Pleased to welcome Anika Noni Rose back to this program. The Tony-winning actress has starred in so many notable projects, including, of course, "Dreamgirls."
She now stars in one of the most critically acclaimed new shows on TV, "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency." The show airs Sunday nights at 8:00 on HBO. Here now, a scene from "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency."
[Clip]
Tavis: First of all, great show. Second of all, who knew you were so funny? (Laughter) When I saw the first episode, I was, like, oh my God. We've talked over the years - I had no idea you could be so funny.
Anika Noni Rose: Thank you, thank you.
Tavis: Is that part of what - you tell me what attracted you to the role, but I could see the humor in it when I first saw the script.
Rose: I really wanted to do - this was the first thing I did after "Dreamgirls," and I wanted to do something that was completely different from that. And you just don't get much more different than this. It's the anti-glam. (Laughter) And she's so quirky and just weird, and I loved it. I loved the script.
Tavis: To your point now, what attracts you, a woman who is extremely attractive, to an anti-glam role?
Rose: I think that (unintelligible) is just so much about that person and who that person is and what their life is about, which is not to say that glam roles aren't about the person. But I think that there are a lot of other things that people get excited about looking at in that situation, and for me it's just the necessity to change it up. I just need to change it up; I find it boring if I'm stuck in the same similar thing all the time.
Tavis: So you get bored. In other words, what you're saying is you get bored being cute all the time.
Rose: No. (Laughter) You're not going to trap me. "Anika Noni Rose is bored being cute."
Tavis: Yeah, yeah - that'd be on YouTube about 10 minutes from now.
Rose: Right? "She thinks she's cute."
Tavis: She thinks she's all that, exactly. (Laughter) For those who have not seen it as yet, let me back up where I should have begun. I just jumped into your funny, because it is a great show.
Rose: Thank you.
Tavis: Let me let you tell the story of what the show is, and the character you play.
Rose: I play Mamakutsi (phonetic) and the show is about a woman, Precious Ramotswe, whose father has died and left her a lot of cows. She sells the cows, opens a ladies' detective agency - a detective agency, and then she turns out to call it Ladies' Detective Agency because it's hers.
Tavis: That's the character played by Jill Scott.
Rose: Yes. In Botswana, where there are no detective agencies, never mind run by a woman. So she's a trailblazer. I come and I want to say audition, because that's what I do when I'm looking for a job, but I interview. (Laughter)
Tavis: Same thing.
Rose: Yeah, yeah.
Tavis: Same thing.
Rose: I audition to be her secretary and I get the job. And it's a really interesting relationship between the two of them and how they work together. They're very different people. Grace Makutsi is very uptight, she's very tightly wound, she's a perfectionist.
She's gotten the highest score in her school of secretarial college there in Botswana, but she's somebody who's been ignored for most of her life due to the way she looks and other things. So this is the first time that she's really being recognized for the things that she's doing and for the ability that she has, for her intelligence.
And it's a coming-out for her of sorts, as much as she does come out, which is not a lot. (Laughs)
Tavis: This is one of those "Inside the Actor's Studio" kind of questions - so, you've given us a sketch of the character now. So you go where to research to figure out how to play the character? How does Anika bring this character to life in her own unique way?
Rose: I read all the books. And I had read some of the books before I auditioned, which was good; it gave me a base. Before I auditioned I went to D.C. to visit the consulate for Botswana. They were closed. (Laughter) That didn't work out.
Tavis: For future reference, here's how you do this - you call or your agent calls, saying, "I'm Anika Noni Rose, I'm coming." You don't just show up.
Rose: I wasn't thinking like that. (Laughter) I was like, "I'm going to go to the consulate - that's what I'll do."
Tavis: I'll just go show up at the - I like that modus. I'm just going to show up and they will let me in.
Rose: Yeah, I'm going. It's a Monday. But it was a holiday Monday. I didn't think about that. (Laughter) I was excited.
So I actually ended up talking to people later in the week at the consulate there and I didn't tell them why I was talking to them, because I wanted to hear the way they spoke. So I just asked them questions about the country and took that in and used that.
But basically there was so much information in the books and also within the script. The script was written so well. I bought some books on Botswana just to - after I got the job - to figure out culture and not to offend somebody when I went there, just to not walk in ignorant.
I think we're so mis-educated about Africa and what it is, to the point where Botswana's a country but we oftentimes don't realize that this huge continent, the largest continent, is filled with countries.
So it's easy to think, like we have states, oh, yeah, we're going to Botswana, it's a state. No, it's a country, and it's a place of its own. And it's never been under the heel of apartheid, so you're talking about people who are very proud and very able to take care of themselves and without that hint of having known the feeling of being downtrodden.
Tavis: What do you make of the people of Botswana?
Rose: I loved the people. I loved the people. They are very generous people. They're not quick to smile, which is very interesting, and it's not out of a coldness or a shutting-out.
Tavis: That certainly fits your character.
Rose: Yeah, no, she don't smile either.
Tavis: Yeah, that's my point. (Laughter) So you fit right in with the people then.
Rose: Yeah.
Tavis: Yeah, exactly. (Laughter)
Rose: A friend of mine there told me, because we brought a camera and wanted to take pictures of just friends on the set or whatever. And nobody was smiling. I was, like, "What's up?" And he said, "Smiles happen. We don't smile because the camera is out; we smile because something brought it about."
Tavis: That's a great line - smiles happen.
Rose: I think that's fantastic. It's very honest. And the people there are so excited about what we're doing, everyone was helpful. If I mentioned that I wanted to ask somebody to say a word again or what something meant or just to read.
I would pick different passages in books or whatever to have somebody to read it, just to hear the sound and the rhythm. Everyone was helpful, and I loved it.
Tavis: You guys were there for a while.
Rose: Yes.
Tavis: Months.
Rose: Yes. Last year, we were there for four months.
Tavis: Yeah. Jill and I were playing phone tag about some other business, and I could never connect with her because she was in Botswana for, like, ever. (Laughter) I said, "Are you ever going to come back?"
Rose: No.
Tavis: Because she was there for - yeah, exactly. She was there for so long. What's it like being in Africa for the first time and being there for four months of a stretch?
Rose: Well, the first time we were there, we were there for two and a half months. I found it exhilarating. I really love learning about other people's cultures, and I met with people from so many different tribes and so many different areas that I really just got to take in people and who they are and what makes them move the way they move.
And it's a totally different way of being; it's a completely different energy. So for me - and that first go-around, I only actually filmed for 12 days for the pilot, so I was there for two and a half months and on set for 12 days. So I was running around and meeting people -
Tavis: See, that's the part about Hollywood you love - you get paid for two and a half months of work and she worked for 12 days.
Rose: I was working.
Tavis: Yes.
Rose: I just wasn't on set. (Laughter)
Tavis: That's the kind of job I want. That's the kind of job I want.
Rose: I was learning. I was learning the sounds and the movement and I was learning some of the language, as well. And I attribute that to Anthony, that he really wanted us to be there for as long as we could to be able to take on the feeling of that place.
Tavis: You raised the name Anthony - I assume you mean Anthony Minghella. Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack, both now deceased but both involved in it. What's it like to be on a project when you have - these are major players who helped get this thing off the ground and neither one of them are here now to see it in its -
Rose: In its completion.
Tavis: Yeah, its completion.
Rose: I never met Sydney Pollack. At the time that we started he was already very, very sick. Anthony's death was a complete surprise - it was a shock. But I spent a lot of time with him and I considered him a friend by the time that thing was over, and he was a lovely person to work for.
He just - and I think that you see it in the pilot - he had such a love for these people and this land and the story that he was trying to tell, so he didn't want to turn it into a fairy tale and he didn't want it to be about the negative, which so often I think happens in Africa.
And I was so thankful for that, and I think that we really, really - we have not yet felt the loss of that kind of a creative force. I don't think that we know yet what it is that we've lost, because nobody was creating the things that he was doing the way he was doing them.
Tavis: Certainly two giants in this business, to be sure. Here's the exit question. As you were talking a moment ago about being there for four months last year, it means, then, that you were there when Obama was making his run.
Rose: I was.
Tavis: All right. So, a two-part question: What was it like, what do you recall from your conversations, being in Africa, of all places, for four months while he's making his run back home - that's the first part of the question. The second part: What did you learn? What do you recall, what did you take away from being outside of America and looking back on it during this historic period? Does that make sense?
Rose: Yes.
Tavis: Okay.
Rose: It was very interesting, because the news about us away from us is a much more free piece of news. (Laughs)
Tavis: That was very diplomatically put. That was a slap at the American media, and it didn't even feel like that.
Rose: I'm just saying -
Tavis: You'll start bleeding in about 30 seconds. She cut you and you didn't even feel it. Yeah.
Rose: But it was a very interesting thing because it was so clear to me what was going on here, and I don't know how clear it was here. It was so clear to me how inept and un-ready Sarah Palin was, how I should have never even heard her name in that race. And I don't know how it was here, how it was covered here, but nobody else was fooled in other places.
I also saw - I've never seen people so excited about something. When he won, it was - I was called on set at 6:00. I am never late for set. This was the first day that was - and I was real late. I was, like, 40 minutes late to get to set.
Tavis: All Black folk were late that day.
Rose: And it didn't matter.
Tavis: No matter what you did or where you were. (Laughter)
Rose: We were driving down the street, I was beeping the horn, we were yelling. People were, like, so excited and thrilled. And I'm talking about Black Africans, White South Africans, Afrikaners - thrilled about the possibility of what this means and what this man is bringing not only to us, but to the world.
When I saw the news and I saw Ireland partying, China partying, people from all walks of life, I think it's really unfortunate what we've had to go through in the past eight years, but I wonder if it would have been possible without that kind of ugliness and disturbance in the world, and I was proud. I was really proud of America.
Tavis: As many of us were, and are. And you should be proud of the work you're doing now, on this show.
It's a great show. I was so pleased when I got a chance to check it out and have seen the episodes since, but I think you'll like it. It's called "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency." It stars Jill Scott and Anika Noni Rose - a wonderful cast of characters. And I'm glad you came to see us.
Rose: Thank you.
Tavis: Thank you. So how does the - you're in the States for a while now? You don't have to go back to shooting anything (unintelligible)?
Rose: No, not yet. We don't know yet what the schedule is, so I'm just sort of taking -
Tavis: So you're just home for a little bit.
Rose: Well, I'm finishing up the Disney project.
Tavis: That's right, sure - tell me about that right quick. Yeah, go ahead - tell me.
Rose: Well, we're in a picture lock right now and -
Tavis: That means we're near the end.
Rose: That means we're near the end, so I'll be going in to fix some vocal things, just some last-minute stuff, but we're on the home stretch and it's.
Tavis: And your character? There she is, on the screen.
Rose: I'm Princess Tiana - that's me.
Tavis: There you go, there you go.
Rose: And it is so thrilling to me. It is so exciting to me.
Tavis: (Unintelligible) animation? You like this, huh?
Rose: I love it. I love it. It's a different kind of challenge because you're in there by yourself, so it's almost, in some points, a more difficult challenge, but what you have to do is find your inner three-year-old, because kids do it all the time. They play every character in their fantasy and they're doing every action, and that's what you have to do in there with that microphone, and it's thrilling.
Tavis: If it's about being a three-year-old, me and a bunch of my partners here -
Rose: (Laughs) You can do it.
Tavis: - should go work for Disney. (Laughter) Glad to have you on the program. Good to see you, Anika.
Rose: Thank you, Tavis.
Back to April 23, 2009