If I can get through Idol I can get through anything Jennifer Hudson on courage

With just 3400 seats, the Star Plaza Theatre in Merrillville, Indiana, was compact enough that even a person in the back row had a pretty amazing view of Aretha Franklin, who sang there many times over the course of her long career.

Sure, for a woman who’d performed at prestige venues such as Radio City Music Hall, the White House and Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, it was a fairly low-key gig. But not, in 2004, for a relatively raw young singer named Jennifer Hudson, who was booked to open for the Queen of Soul.

This was in the aftermath of Jennifer’s success on American Idol â€" the talent show’s third season, in which she had placed seventh â€" and a year before she landed the part of Effie White in the film adaptation of the musical Dreamgirls, alongside Beyoncé Knowles.

When the legend and the ingénue met backstage at the Star Plaza there was, understandably, some measure of deference. Aretha expected to be referred to as “Miss Franklin”, and it was a courtesy Jennifer retained in every one of their subsequent meetings.

Thinking back to that encounter, Jennifer says, “It wasn’t so much the conversation, because it wasn’t much of a conversation, but the opportunity that she had given me to be backstage, so close to the stage, watching Aretha Franklin perform and knowing that I got to be a part of the show.

“At that point, you’re like, ‘Wait a minute, you know I exist?’ For her to know my name and then to give me an opportunity like that, I think that’s like every dreamer’s dream, artist’s dream, singer’s dream,” Jennifer says. “All of us hold her in very high regard as a musician, so to be acknowledged by her at a time like that, it was a wow moment for me.”

It would be some 15 years until the pair met again, this time because Aretha had decided that she wanted Jennifer to play her in what was then just the grain of an idea for a biopic. “We sat down, we had some breakfast, and I was terrified, like, oh my god, this is Aretha Franklin,” Jennifer says. “We talked about â€" not the concept, because there was no script at the time â€" but vision.”

By the time of this second meeting, though, the little girl had grown up.
In 2006, she’d won an Oscar and a Bafta for best supporting actress for her work in Dreamgirls. Her debut studio album, Jennifer Hudson, had snared her a Grammy in 2009. She’d performed Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah for Pope Francis in 2015. And, somewhere in the middle of all of that, she’d played Carrie Bradshaw’s assistant Louise, a small but resonant role, in the Sex and the City movie. Best of all, she’d done all this while somehow keeping her private life relatively private.

Now wheels were being set in motion that would bring Jennifer into focus as Miss Franklin in the film Respect, directed by Liesl Tommy and written by Tracey Scott Wilson.

Jennifer Hudson and Aretha Franklin in New York, 2015.Credit:Getty Images

It’s these same wheels that bring Sunday Life to an unremarkable stadium in Duluth, Georgia, where Jennifer is re-creating one of Aretha’s best-remembered performances of the song Respect, and a famous meeting with Dr Martin Luther King jnr.

The scale of the production is stunning. And Jennifer’s evocation of a musical legend for whom, until now, there has been no worthy copy, is equally breathtaking. As she walks into a backstage dressing room, everyone she passes tries not to double-take. Even with the studio lights off, Miss Hudson’s channelling of Miss Franklin’s presence is palpable.

In some ways this is a role Jennifer was born to play. Though many of the specific details of their individual lives are very different, they share some powerful touchstones. Both were raised in Baptist families â€" Aretha in Detroit, Jennifer in Chicago â€" and both came to singing through church. Jennifer acknowledges their common background in gospel music. “We’re both singers who became well known for that. So in that way, it’s familiar or similar, but everyone has their own track, their own story, I guess.”

The film itself is a detailed study of Aretha’s life. At the same time, some of the most moving scenes are not of its stars but of the women, black and white, who bore witness to the Queen of Soul’s success. In Respect they’re often seen mouthing the words to her songs, an almost-mime which demonstrates Aretha’s enduring impact.

Jennifer Hudson on the film set of Respect.Credit:Getty Images

Jennifer is fully aware of the title song’s context in 1960s America. “Respect, it’s a song, right, and okay, this woman is talented and I love this song. But when you go back and look at what was going on, who would ever have thought that a woman could stand up and demand respect back then? You barely had a voice.

“It gives the role that much more power, knowing what you were representing, knowing what you were singing through. Because now you get to understand where the material came from, what it represented, what the message was, and why it was so impactful that Respect came from
a woman during a time like that.

“We barely had rights. You could barely have a voice or take up space in the room. It gives the song its meaning when you know what was going on, because this woman stepped up and had a voice which became the voice of women, the anthem of women, and of people. Of all the oppressed.”

“I do what I do because I love it, and I’ve never tried to think about the accolades, or the attention. But it’s a very true perspective of fame.”

Jennifer first stepped onto the stage as a young girl, singing in her church choir, encouraged by her grandmother and her mother, Darnell. In 2004, her star soared as one of the contestants on the third season of American Idol, and while she didn’t win, she became one of the show’s most successful alumni along with Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood.

The speed with which Jennifer achieved such significant fame serves to remind her of its fragile, ephemeral nature. This is reflected in a line in the film: “You stop for five minutes and they forget all about you,” Aretha says.

“That’s the nature of the business,” says Jennifer. “I do what I do because I love it, and I’ve never tried to think about the accolades, or the attention. But it’s a very true perspective of fame.”

But equally, Jennifer adds, had she not been eliminated in the final rounds of American Idol back in 2004, she would not have stepped onto the set of Dreamgirls and had the opportunity to fine-tune her craft alongside Beyoncé, Anika Noni Rose and Sharon Leal.

“I think the girl on the Idol stage could not be the girl that’s here today,” says Jennifer, who was 22 at the time. “I don’t think I would have been able to do it if I’d had this opportunity back then. I feel like everything prepares you for the next thing.

“Everything â€" the stage experiences, the life experiences, having that dream to draw from, to stand on â€" it gave me the strength and the courage. I would tell myself, ‘If I can get through Idol, I can get through anything.’ ”

“Music is so powerful â€" it’s soul-changing, it can be therapy, just hearing a song can take you back to places.”

These would prove to be portentous words. In 2008, Jennifer’s mother Darnell, brother Jason and nephew Julian were killed by her brother-in-law. In response, Jennifer and her sister Julia created the Hudson-King Foundation, for families of murder victims, and the Julian D. King Gift Foundation, in her nephew’s name, which donates Christmas presents and educational supplies to families in Chicago.

“It’s a matter of how you deal with it,” Jennifer told The Guardian in 2019. “When you experience trauma, it comes and goes. It’s always there. To live in a way that honours them is what presses you forward.”

In the here and now, Jennifer’s happiest place is a very solitary space, sitting at the piano. It is also where she feels closest to Aretha. In the film we see glimpses of those moments in flashback to her childhood where, amid the turbulence of her home life, the future Queen of Soul found consistency and clarity of purpose.

“I feel as though Aretha expressed herself mostly through song, so I feel like that’s when she’s most vulnerable and honest and open, when she’s on the stage singing,” says Jennifer. “That’s when she expresses herself.”

Speaking about the experience of standing alone on stage, in front an audience, Jennifer says, “It’s so intimate and it’s so open, at least for me. Music is so powerful â€" it’s soul-changing, it can be therapy, just hearing a song can take you back to places.

“That’s what touched me so much in the scenes where her mother came to visit her, because I had so many moments like that with my mom and family. It spoke to me. And I imagine maybe it was a similar thing for her as well.”

Respect opens in all cinemas not in lockdown on August 19 and in Sydney as soon as cinemas reopen.

This article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age on sale August 8. To read more from Sunday Life, visit The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.

Michael Idato is the culture editor-at-large of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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