Teyana Taylor has said that she indeed will be playing Dionne Warwick in a new biopic. The 32-year-old star has opened up that she has already started work on her portrayal of the “Walk on By” hitmaker for the upcoming movie.
“We’re already working on it. We’re in the building process right now. I always wanted to make sure I could lock in with any person that I would be playing,” Teyana told “Tamron Hall”.
She explained that she is taking inspiration from Angela Bassett’s take on Tina Turner in the 1993 film “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and Jamie Foxx’s portrayal of Ray Charles in the 2004 movie “Ray”. The “A Thousand and One” star said, “I miss when movies were like that, when you got to really get to know them and tap in.”
Teyana revealed that she speaks regularly to Warwick, 80, and is determined to make sure that her story is told in the right way on the big screen. She said, “We talk almost every day. I’ve always been a firm believer and stood on safety. She’s had a wonderful career, and I think right now is about making her feel as safe as possible to tell her story because a lot of these stories get misconstrued or dramatised to an extent. That’s not really where we want to go.”
Warwick had teased the project back in 2021 although she had suggested that it was going to be a television series. The music legend told Entertainment Weekly, “(Teyana) is certainly a talented young lady with whom I’ve had the pleasure of interfacing. She’s very excited about the prospect of being involved, and she’s also going to be very, very much involved in directing it and putting together parts and parcel of how we see this going.”
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