This week is a good one for Taraji P. Henson.
“Empire” returns from its winter hiatus on Wednesday and her new film, “Tyler Perry’s Acrimony,” comes out Friday.
The coincidence is one Henson initially missed. “Yeah I just realized that,” she chuckles via telephone from New York City. Since she began playing Cookie in 2015, the Washington, D.C. native’s popularity has gone into overdrive. Cookie, the ex-wife of rapper/music mogul Lucious Lyon and mother of his three sons, spent nearly twenty years in prison before coming back to claim half of the music empire for which she sacrificed her freedom.
Melinda, the woman scorned she plays in “Acrimony,” might remind fans of Cookie, but the two are not exactly alike.
“I hope they can see the difference in the characters,” Henson said. “Cookie’s already been to jail … she’s not going to jeopardize her freedom so she’s not going to snap. Melinda is snapping.”
On the surface, Melinda is more vulnerable than Cookie. So much so that audiences may recognize themselves or someone they know in her. But, like Cookie, she too seems to have a score to settle. After loving and sacrificing for her husband for years, another woman is enjoying Melinda’s fruit and she’s not happy about that. A lot of “Acrimony” how Melinda and her husband Robert, played by Lyriq Bent, get here.
Another parallel to “Empire” is in the backstory with the character who plays Melinda’s younger version. “Empire” fans will immediately recognize Ajiona Alexus as the same actress who plays a teenage Cookie. As with Cookie in “EmpirIe,” Alexus’s role as a young Melinda here, especially as she falls for the younger Robert, is critical to understanding who Melinda becomes.
“It was so crucial [for me] to show those moments that trigger her and show how much she held in,” Alexus explained via telephone from Los Angeles. “I feel like Melinda is the type of character [who] holds [her emotions] in and then, when she pounces or she attacks, she goes all the way in.”
Tracking Melinda’s early emotional build-up is important, Alexus shared, because “it shows you, ‘okay, she dealt with that, this happened and this happened’; it wasn’t just a random ‘oh my God, this girl’s crazy.’”
For Henson, Melinda’s unhinged state made her an appealing role. “It was very intense. It was like Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction.” So I always had a character like that on my bucket list,” Henson explained.
There are no dead bunnies here, however. Instead the heat is turned up on relationships. There is a lot going against the couple. Robert’s blind obsession with perfecting an invention he believes will make them ridiculously rich generates a lot of tension. Melinda’s sisters’ refusal to accept Robert adds another layer of conflict. And then there are signs, many of them missed, that Melinda may suffer from mental illness. So Melinda is not without her faults. For Henson, Melinda’s unspoken expectations also play a role in the marriage’s demise.
“She made a vow with God that she would love that man through sickness and health, ups and downs, good and bad,” she said. “This man had a dream. That’s not new information. She knew that when she jumped the broom with him. Now did she go in with some kind of expectation? Probably, you know ‘I’ll give him 10 years for this dream to pay off.’ But we all know that life can throw curve balls.”
About Post Author
