Jennifer Hudson Is Instyle's August Cover
During a red carpet interview around the time of her star turn in Dream Girls — in which she played Effie White and won the Oscar at just 25 years old — she was asked what could top that experience. Her response?
''The only thing I can imagine that I will want to do, or that could be anywhere near this, will be to play Aretha Franklin,'" she recalls telling the interviewer. "Fast forward from there, all of the sudden Aretha Franklin wants to meet me."
The world may have been introduced to Jennifer Hudson through her homage to Aretha Franklin, but not even in her wildest dreams did she expect to be in the presence of the Queen of Soul herself nearly three years later, in 2007, with Franklin requesting that she portray her in Respect, a biopic about her life. But Hudson is no stranger to turning fantasies into reality — during our conversation, her Pomeranian, aptly named Dreamgirl, starts yapping. "Her father was Oscar, and her mother was Grammy. Then they had a puppy, and I named it Dreamgirl," she explains. "I got the dog Oscar before I won my Oscar for Dreamgirls. And then I said, 'Oscar needs a wife. So how about I get a dog and name it Grammy, and maybe I'll win a Grammy.' And then I got the dog Grammy, and I won the Grammy."
Read the entire article at Instyle here.
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