EXCLUSIVE: Actress Taraji P. Henson is in contention for an Oscar nomination for her performance as Shug Avery in The Color Purple. But she’s also got a big stake in another Academy Award contender, the feature documentary Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project.
Henson serves as an executive producer of the HBO film directed by Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster, which made the Oscar doc shortlist announced on December 21. And she serves as the narrator of the documentary, voicing poetry by Giovanni, a cultural powerhouse in America for more than 50 years now.
For the voiceover on the film, “We had to find a happy medium,” Henson tells Deadline. “When you take on Nikki’s poems – and because [the film] is about her, it needed to sound like her. It needed to feel like her. When she reads her words, it’s almost conversational. Because for her, it’s a matter of fact. It is what it is. There is no performance to it.”
The documentary, which earned the top prize at the Sundance Film Festival last year, examines the emergence of Giovanni in the 1960s, her activism, incisive commentary on institutionalized racism, and the substance of her works of poetry including the 2010 volume Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We’re Going to Mars). In the title poem, she imagines a human mission to Mars and urges NASA to prepare by seeking guidance from Black Americans, whose ancestors endured the Middle Passage.
“They need to ask us: How did you calm your fears,” Giovanni writes. “How were you able to decide you were human even when everything said you were not/…How did you find the comfort in the face of the improbable to make the world you came to your world/…How was your soul able to look back and wonder”
Henson studied at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, a historically Black institution, and got her degree from another HBCU, Howard University. “We had Black studies, we studied Black music, poets. You gotta know we talked about Nikki Giovanni,” she says. “We watched those intellectual conversations that she had with James Baldwin. That’s where I started to learn to question things and ideologies about Black women. I found myself as a black woman in Howard University and Nikki Giovanni has a lot to do with that.”
In the documentary, Giovanni exudes uncompromising intelligence and wit. She shows no hesitation shutting down a question, or a questioner, for instance, at public appearances.
“I was a little nervous [to meet her]. She doesn’t suffer fools lightly. But what I could tell is that she liked me,” Henson says with a laugh. “It was like, phew, I passed that test.”
She continues, “I think there was an understanding of the sisterhood support. Because she’s who she is and then we’re doing this documentary about her, and then I am who I am in the industry and what I do as an artist, and I can lend my voice to help lift up her project. And that’s what it’s all about. And I think there was a sense of pride there from both of us.”
Henson says she’s pulling for Going to Mars to earn an Oscar recognition when the nominations are revealed the morning of January 23.
“I’m really most proud of this documentary because of what Nikki Giovanni means to culture and how she has affected my life in the most incredible way,” Henson says. “She means so much to me and the Black woman that I’ve become and how I’ve been able to hold my head up high in the industry that may not be so nice sometimes. It would be a great honor for her to get this. It has nothing to do with me. I just want to help more people — if you don’t know about Nikki Giovanni, I want her on a big stage. The world should know about her.”
As Deadline, the New York Times, and other outlets have reported, Henson has been outspoken in recent weeks on several matters, including pay disparities for Black women in Hollywood, and issues she said occurred during the filming of The Color Purple, including the cast being asked to drive themselves to set in rental cars, which Henson considered a liability problem. We asked her if she has taken inspiration from Giovanni, who has never been one to pull punches.
“Listen, I’m going to tell you about fate,” she responds. “This project came to me for a reason. Clearly, clearly.” She adds, “The timing was right, and they had me at two words: Nikki Giovanni. I said, yes.”
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