12/28/2022 0 Comments Can't be with you mary j blige![]() I used to wear a lot of weaves and wigs and cover up my edges and stuff. Mary J Blige don’t have a husband… any more.” Was it nice to not be Mary J Blige for a while? “Absolutely. You’ve got to be Florence, in the heat, in the mosquitoes, in the mud, in the little shack with all the kids and the husband. ![]() She set to work on shedding her pop star skin: “You can’t be Mary J Blige. She hired an acting coach, who taught her to use what was going on in her life – “I always have a lot of stuff going on in my life,” she smiles. Director Dee Rees has said she only wanted Blige for Florence Blige said she accepted immediately, because the script moved her to tears. Mudbound is her first real chance at a meaty role, and she more than holds her own against a seasoned cast that includes Jonathan Banks and Carey Mulligan. How did we go from President Obama, maturity and positivity and wisdom, to negativity and texting and twittering and all this bullshit, and blowing up and pointing the finger? It’s crazy.” I was angry about not having lashes and then I was like, ‘Oh my God Mary, you’re so vain' She doesn’t want to be too political, she says, but there’s a reason that it resonates now, and she’s angry and articulate about the state of her home nation. “I believe it will have that effect on everyone, because of how close it is now to how we’re living in the world,” says Blige. As Florence, Blige negotiates hardship, pain and fierce injustice with a surprising and gentle subtlety. It isn’t a subtle story, but it’s deeply harrowing and has a hefty emotional grip that lingers long after it’s over. Blige is Florence Jackson, the stoic mother of a GI who returns from war to the same old prejudice. She’d acted before, doing bit parts and guest roles here and there, mostly in comedies, but today she’s talking about Mudbound, the new film she’s starring in, which tells an evocative story of racism and friendship on a farm in Mississippi in the period immediately after the Second World War. She moved to Los Angeles towards the end of her marriage in order to take acting more seriously. Mary J Blige plays Florence, the stoic mother of a GI, in the postwar period film Mudbound.īut Blige is not here to promote a new album, though she released one of her best records in years back in April, The Strength of a Woman. In 2001, when she released No More Drama, there was a sense that she was drawing a line under the pain. Her music was often raw, and laid out the suffering she endured in toxic relationships. She collaborated with George Michael, U2 and Elton John, who said she had “one of the best voices you’re ever going to hear”. The album won multiple awards and went triple platinum, selling more than 3m copies. She was a backing singer first, before she released her debut album, What’s the 411?, produced by Puff Daddy, in 1992. Blige grew up in Yonkers, New York, and was signed to Uptown Records as a teenager in the late 80s, after a tape of her singing an Anita Baker track in a shopping mall found its way to the label. The previous chapters have been action-packed, to say the least. “This is a whole other chapter of my life,” she insists. ![]() The past five years have been hard, but change is on the horizon. She doesn’t want this interview to be “all about that one thing”, yet she can’t seem to help but talk about it, again and again. In 2016, she filed for divorce from her husband of 12 years, Kendu Isaacs, citing irreconcilable differences. She keeps circling back to the end of her marriage. She’s just off the plane from the United States, and she needs fried food, so the artist known as the queen of hip-hop soul ends up picking at fish and chips and drinking a cup of tea. “It was really emotional for me, for so many reasons that I can’t even get into. “I didn’t know so many people knew my songs,” she says, two years later, over dinner in a London hotel. The crowd watched her through the pouring rain, and as her most famous single, No More Drama, came to a rapturous end, she fell to the floor, and looked as if she was about to break down into tears. I n 2015, Mary J Blige gave an impassioned performance on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury.
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