Monday, May. 17, 1999
Stop! In the Name of Divas
By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY
Diana Ross and Brandy. It sounds like the start of a movie pitch. Turns out, it's a pitch that worked: the two singers, one a legend and the other a Gen-Y sensation, are co-starring in the dramatic TV movie Double Platinum, airing this Sunday at 9 p.m. E.T. on ABC.
Lady Makes a Return
Distractions, distractions. Everything in Diana Ross's midtown Manhattan apartment vies for your attention: a zebra-patterned couch, brightly colored Warhol portraits of Ross, a table full of black panther statuettes, a large gold Hindu figurine. One thing holds your focus: Ross herself. The 55-year-old Motown great looks fabulous--slim, smiling, sexy. She seems as breezily radiant as she ever was, flipping back her wavy black hair after every other sentence. One wonders why it took so long for the Oscar-nominated star of such big-screen films as Lady Sings the Blues (1972) and the TV movie Out of Darkness (1994) to get back in front of the camera.
Ross says she was just looking for a quality script. In fact, after agreeing to co-star with Brandy in Double Platinum--she liked the younger woman's spirit--she nearly pulled out after giving her character's dialogue a once-over. Says Ross: "So I asked the director [Robert Allan Ackerman], 'Will you allow me to improvise?' And he was very open to that." (Ross and Brandy both say they ad-libbed much of their dialogue.) Ross also made one more request: she wanted the script's setting moved from Los Angeles to New York City so she could be closer to her children (she has two sons, Ross, 12, and Evan, 10, as well as three adult daughters, Rhonda, Tracee and Chudney).
Ironically, Platinum is about a singer (played by Ross) who abandons her family for stardom. "A lot of people are wondering if the part she's playing is autobiographical," says Ross's daughter Rhonda,who is also an actress. "This is really the antistory of her life, the opposite of an autobiography. She made completely different choices than her character."
Right now Ross's family is going through a painful time. Last week, after 13 years of marriage, Ross announced she is divorcing her husband, Norwegian shipping magnate Arne Naess. She is philosophical about the breakup: "Through each lifetime you go through rough patches, and you always hope for the best. Sometimes change is not bad. Sometimes people come into your life, and then it's time to make a change. This is one of those times." Is there a chance of reconciliation? Says Ross: "I would always like to think there's a chance, but I have a feeling there's not." Last week Ross released a new CD, appropriately titled Every Day Is a New Day (Motown), which includes several songs she performs in Platinum.
Recently Ross received a phone call from a friend--Michael Jackson--who was also working on a new album. "Late, late at night I get a call: 'Hello, Diana?' I said, 'Michael, is that you?' He said he was working on an album, and the album would be out sometime in the year 2000."
Ross's own songs are still very much a part of youth culture. Sean ("Puffy") Combs has sampled her voice; singer Monica sampled parts of Ross's rendition of Love Hangover for her No. 1 single The First Night. That last bit of borrowing did not sit well with Ross. "They didn't ask me before they did it," she says. "I was furious. They used the whole track." Not long ago, Ross was asked to be part of vh1's Divas Live '99. Although she says she admires some of the other acts on the roster, notably Tina Turner and Brandy, Ross declined. "It seemed like they were creating a sort of competition," says Ross. "I just didn't think it was well done."
Platinum is a sweet, glamorous indulgence--like eating fancy chocolates before bedtime. Ross's achingly good performance gives the movie an emotional core. There's a well-acted scene in which Ross's character is asked if she has any regrets. Are there any choices in Ross's long career that she would, in retrospect, like to change? Her answer is immediate: "No." Hollywood should have the regrets.
New Kid on the Block
All that youthful fame demands is this: that its recipients grow up too quickly or not at all. This thought slips into your mind as you enter Brandy's Manhattan hotel room.
Brandy, a best-selling pop-soul singer and the star of UPN's youthful sitcom Moesha, has just awakened. The diva/actress, who first found fame as a teenager, is now 20, more woman than girl. This is her thespian coming-of-age time, the moment when it happens or it doesn't. An ingenue either aims for Jodie Fosteresque acting glory or is condemned to a Peter Pan-ish purgatory, a high-voiced, short-pants-wearing Urkel-ish hell in which she is damned to re-enact the clumsy tics of adolescence forever.
Brandy wants mature stardom. "I have a crazy side to me, people don't know," she says. One is sure of her sincerity but unconvinced of her veracity: Brandy comes across, at all times, as sweet as a side order of candied yams. She continues, "I wanted to be in [the urban action film] Set It Off so bad, I wanted to rob a bank so bad ..." One tries to picture Brandy with a firearm. It's difficult. One tries to picture Tipper Gore with an AK-47. That's easier. Brandy keeps going: "I was a happy little girl. Now I'm a woman. I'm just trying to challenge myself. Why can't I play a country girl from Texas who decides to kill her mom?"
In Double Platinum, fans of the good-girl Brandy will be glad to note that her character does not rob any banks or try to whack her mother. But her acting does show off some unexpected shadings. As a singer, Brandy's voice is slight, too weak-kneed to carry heavy burdens of emotion. On the small screen, however, she has found her medium: she has an easy way about her that invites us into her character's emotions. As the star of 1997's highly rated ABC-TV movie Cinderella, she brought a 'round-the-way elegance to the proceedings. In Double Platinum, in which she plays a would-be singer struggling to come to terms with parental abandonment, her acting has become more assured. Her performance seems natural and without visible wires, and her character's moods have far more resonance than the carefully managed sentiments of her sitcom.
Brandy's biggest fear is losing her stardom in scandal: "I'm scared of ever making one mistake where tabloids and magazines can make me look like something I've never been." So far, though, her life has been pretty much an embarrassment-free dream. Her latest record, Never S-A-Y Never, isn't just double platinum, it's quadruple platinum. She has worked with Whitney Houston (on Cinderella). Now she's working with Ross. Even Brandy's dad, Willie Ray Norwood Sr., is impressed by this latest pairing. "I've loved Diana Ross my whole life," he says. Platinum's script sometimes called for Brandy's character to treat Ross with contempt. "I apologized to her after every scene," says Brandy, echoing her father's awe. "I was like, 'Ms. Ross, I'm just doing my job.'"
There are other dreams Brandy's after. For one, she wants to tour in Japan. She wants to look out at a crowd that doesn't understand a word she's singing and yet somehow feels what she's feeling. She has already visited Japan on a tiny, promo-tour scale, but, she explains, "I haven't been to Japan like Whitney's been to Japan, like Tina [Turner]'s been to Japan, like Diana Ross has been to Japan." Impact is everything. It's at moments like these that one sees another side of Brandy, a shrewdly ambitious side. She may lack the blunt careerist lust of, say, Celine Dion, but her gaze is just as focused on global stardom. TV movies are just an initial step. Watch out, Tokyo.