Sate of Union: Gabrielle’s Perfect Holiday
The last time audiences saw Gabrielle Union, she was playing a sassy attorney dating a single father with three kids. In her latest flick, its role reversal for Union who’s now a divorced mother of three dating a struggling songwriter. It’s quite the turnaround for the actress whose experience with kids is far from hands on.
While Union’s drawn to comedic scripts with a social message, the Omaha native is quick to point out that she’s passionate about working — whatever the part may be. Best known for her role as a suburban cheer captain in the dueling-cheerleaders flick Bring It On, Union got her start in Hollywood when she interned at a modeling agency whilst in her senior year at University. With her athletic frame, talent, good looks and infectious charm it wasn’t long before she swapped the desk for the runway. Acting offers soon came knocking with Union making several appearances on more than a dozen television shows and movies, including Moesha, 7th Heaven, Deliver Us from Eva and Cradle 2 the Grave. In 2001, she became the first African-American love interest on NBC’s all-white hit sitcom Friends and gained further notoriety when she headlined a role alongside Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in the action flick Bad Boys II.
Reuniting with actor Morris Chestnut in the Queen Latifah produced flick The Perfect Holiday, Union tells Samantha Ofole-Prince all about the upcoming movie, her pet peeves and Christmas plans.
SOP: This will be the 4th flick you have starred in with Morris. With the small pool of black actors in Hollywood is it fair to say they couldn’t find anyone else to play your love interest?
GU: I think people for whatever reason like us together and there’s just an ease. He’s so free of ego and is such a gentleman. He doesn’t come with an entourage or fanfare and just shows up and treats everybody with respect. When you work with people you just don’t know what you’re going to get. He’s not a pervert so it makes having intimate scenes easy. He makes it easy by showing up to do what he has to do and it’s not uncomfortable and he’s a gentleman.
SOP: Since your divorce [former NFL player Chris Howard] two years ago, you’ve have been plagued with vicious rumors, labeled a home wrecker and linked to various A-list celebrities– how do you deal with the dark side of this industry and how important is it to have a strong support system?
GU: I don’t drink and drive. I don’t get arrested and no one had ever seen my private parts. I don’t have those kinds of big, big problems, but now there’s such a hunger for every little bit of information and it’s so negative so you really can’t do a lot. My divorce [in 2005] was played out and speculated everywhere and was hurtful. I think negative blog writing and article writing gets a lot more attention that anything positive. You can be Mother Teresa and still get negativity. You can’t please everybody and it’s hurtful. I do have a great group of
friends especially my actress friends. I get those times when I don’t want to leave the house. I don’t want to be dogged. I don’t want to be shredded because I want to go to Target in my sweats. Then I call Sanaa [Lathan] and I call Essence [Atkins] and they talk to me. So it’s very important that I have a great network, but I take the positive things out of all of it for bad stuff happens to people everyday.
SOP: This movie marks the first time you have worked with Queen Latifah as a producer. What was that experience like? GU: Nobody understands what it is that you go through as an actress and certainly nobody understands what you go through as an African American actress except somebody else and she is an amazing mentor. I have known her for a long time and we have been trying to work together for a while so when she came with this opportunity I was interested. She’s a great boss and you can’t really ask for too much more than somebody who can be sympathetic to what you go through and how you prepare.
SOP: You have played in variety of television and movie genres, but seem to lean more towards comedy. What roles and genres are you most passionate about?
GU: I just love to work! I am passionate about work and whatever the role is try to be as prepared as possible. For the past couple of years I have had stuff happen that I don’t want to go through it onscreen. I don’t play victims well and I don’t respond to victim scripts. I like to play characters I like to see on television. I like Julia Robert movies and Cameron Diaz movies. Life is bad enough and I don’t want to leave the theatre more depressed than when I started and those are the kind of roles I respond to. I‘d rather create something and that’s why I am getting into producing. My manager and I are starting a production company and we have option on a book that was written by a couple of my friends and that’s a movie I would like to see.
SOP: With Christmas merely a few weeks away where do you usually spend Christmas and where will you be spending it this year?
GU: My parents got divorced after 30 years so there’s my dad and his wife and he likes to spend Christmas in Hawaii. Last year my mum became a foster mum at 60 and that has changed her life and she’s just so excited and we started a new tradition with that part of the family. This year we are going to Africa.
SOP: Will this be your first Christmas in Africa?
GU: No it’s actually my third. Literally every year around this time I go to South Africa. We did the first film festival that actually took place in Durban and was there for a week two years ago. Last year I did the Cairo film festival and we got to travel up and down the Nile and go to Egypt and I got to really see the birth place of civilization and it was mind bugling and eye inspiring. It gives you a different perspective on what’s really important.
SOP: Which country are you visiting this year? GU: We are going closer to Jo’berg and Cape Town for two weeks. Its part of a travel show called The Home Coming where they send African-Americans back to Africa and tape their experiences and everyone comes together to Victoria Falls at the end. I am excited. I think it’s a travel show pilot so hopefully it will get picked up on some network. We are raised with this sense of disconnectedness that we are an entity in another self as Americans and African-Americans and it’s something very separate from the rest of the world. The rest of the world doesn’t have that same mentality and when you go there you are so warmly embraced. There are eight boys that live in this house around the corner from my mum that we call the Lost Boys of Sudan and my mum would bring them gifts randomly and they are always so shocked and say they are not normally welcomed in this way. When you go back to Africa it’s like ‘welcome home sister!’ You see noses and you see features and you’re like I have a place of connectedness to this continent when you don’t always feel connected to America. I can’t really articulate how that feels like. It feels like the biggest hug you have ever had from a whole continent.
SOP: With Forest and Whoopi tracing their DNA roots back to Africa; is that something that you have done or planning to do at some point? GU: Both sides of my family have done it. On my mums side it’s really very interesting because the branches go beyond. We didn’t realize there was this whole Filipino side to our family and there are a lot of things that came out that people weren’t quite ready for and they would die if they found out that I spoke about it. It was very interesting. On my dad’s side I didn’t know of all the Native American connections cause they kinda got lost but it all goes back to West Africa. It was just a treat to be able to go back.
