Jordin Sparks Talks Whitney Houston & 'Sparkle' - earsucker

“American Idol” winner Jordin Sparks is still bubbling over about her movie “Sparkle”, in which she stars alongside the late, great Whitney Houston. On the topic of Aretha Franklin, she said, “I realized she sang the original soundtrack. Now she has to listen to our versions of us trying to make them as good as hers? It was just so crazy. I was like, I don’t know if I can handle this right now. But I heard that she said it was amazing. So as long as she liked it, what else is there to do?”

With regard to Whitney, she said, “Every interview, she’s sitting right here. Every premiere, everything that we do, I feel her.”

When speaking on the topic of her role in the movie, she said, “I memorized the script backwards and forwards. I knew my part. I knew everybody else’s parts, I knew everybody else’s lines. I knew entrances and exits. I had that script down pat. That was something that helped me because I’ve always been a words person.”

She went on to say, “I’m walking in going, ‘I can’t be horrible. I have to do an amazing job here or at least be good enough to where they can at least make me look better if I am bad.’ It was just that mind-set. When I was just like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’, they were like, ‘Okay, why don’t you try thinking about something this way or maybe just not emoting so much in your body language, but just make it come through your eyes’ â€" different things like that.”

When speaking of Whitney, she said, “She wanted to get to know us and she wanted to sit down with us and have conversations. She really loved getting to know people. She said hello to every single extra, all the time. She didn’t forget where she came from and she wasn’t ashamed of who she was or the life that she had lived. She’d be the first person to tell you that. Usually when you get to that level, most people get really guarded and private, and she was so open. She was very truthful and open about the fact that the parallels of this story were things that she had lived.”

She said, “She was the mother figure. She was Dee. She was Sparkle. She was Sister. All of those characters were Whitney. I think she was just really excited to tell a story she had lived.”

She added, “One thing Whitney did say to me once was ‘Believe in the talent you have. Believe in your gift.’ I think about that now. I know that if I work hard enough, if it’s something I really want to do, I can make it happen.”