Coming up Rose

Anika Noni Rose’s acting career has steadily blossomed: In 2004, she won a Tony for Caroline, or Change; in 2006, she completed the Dreamgirls trio along with Beyoncé and Jennifer Hudson; and last year, she starred in Broadway’s all-black Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

This year sees Rose in full bloom: She costars with Jill Scott in the new HBO series The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, based on the best-sellers. And when we spoke with her, Rose had just flown back to New York from L.A., where she’d done voice work as Princess Tiana in Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, due in theaters this December.

Time Out Chicago: I hear you beat out Jennifer Hudson, Tyra Banks and Alicia Keys for the Disney role. What’d you do in that audition?
Anika Noni Rose: I did me. [Laughs] When I walk into a room, it’s me against me. What I’m taking is that script and everything from my life that’s applicable.

TOC: What from your life was applicable to Princess Tiana?
Anika Noni Rose: She goes for her dreams in spite of living in a time and place telling her that her dream is not attainable. Well, I’m a girl from Bloomfield, Connecticut. Who knew I would be in Dreamgirls or doing this TV series in Botswana or walking across the stage accepting a Tony?

TOC: Tiana will be the first black princess in an animated Disney movie. That took just 70 years, right?
Anika Noni Rose: [Laughs] She is, and they know it’s about time. They’re thrilled about it. They know it took a long time.

TOC: I saw you on Access Hollywood looking at your Tiana doll for the first time. You really teared up there.
Anika Noni Rose: You know, this is so much bigger than me. This is about every young girl, now an older woman, who thought of themselves as princesses but were putting yellow towels on their heads as if it were their hair. It’s about the children now who are growing up with the Obama presidency, whose first princess will be Tiana. It is representing America in a more truthful visage.

TOC: You also spoke about giving the doll a curl in her hair, round nose, full lips and skin that’s darker than yours so she reads as a brown girl. Did you have a say in the design?
Anika Noni Rose: I didn’t sit down with the doll makers, but Disney is very receptive to things I have to say. I didn’t decide to make her skin darker—that was something they chose—but I did want to make sure she wasn’t a chocolate-dipped Barbie. I want children to look at the doll and feel like they can look like that.

TOC: There’s been some Internet brouhaha about Disney’s original script: complaints about the racial treatment. Did you see any of that?
Anika Noni Rose: What I read? No. I wouldn’t have gone out for something that I felt was disrespectful—to me. [Laughs] Or to someone else. There’s no way I would’ve wanted to be a part of it.

TOC: The Detective Agency pilot was Anthony Minghella’s last directing project; right before it aired in Britain last year, he died from tonsil cancer. How was working for him?
Anika Noni Rose: Wonderful. He just let me fly. There was a lot of joy on set and a lot of music. He didn’t sing particularly well [Laughs], but he didn’t care. We would be between takes, and the whole crew would be singing something rather badly, top 40 or old Motown.

TOC: Was anybody aware he was ill?
Anika Noni Rose: I don’t think anybody was aware he was ill to that extent. We knew he had a cold almost the entire time we were there. In retrospect, I think it was probably the precursor to what was going on, but he didn’t know, no.

TOC: Whenever Westerners travel to Africa, they always use the phrase life changing. Shooting on location in Botswana: life changing?
Anika Noni Rose: Absolutely. I’ve never seen the Earth or the stars that way. You think you’ve seen darkness until you’ve been there. We spent time on the salt pans, the largest piece of uninhabited land in the world, the size of Switzerland. I’ve never felt that close to God before, physically close. And there are people who have been there since the beginning of time.

TOC: You mentioned how the Disney film will register with a new generation. Do you have a kid yourself?
Anika Noni Rose: No.

TOC: ’Cause there’s an online photo of you…
Anika Noni Rose: Oh, me and my ten-year-old walking down the street? Yeah, no. I don’t know who either one of those people are. I know who it’s not! [Laughs] I’m waiting for somebody to find the pregnancy picture.

TOC: So no secret love child?Anika Noni Rose: Yeah, and I keep him hidden in the house, too. He only got to come out that one time.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency premieres Sunday 29 at 7pm on HBO.

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