{"id":190806,"date":"2021-02-27T01:27:10","date_gmt":"2021-02-26T22:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-golden-globe-nominee-andra-day-became-billie-holiday\/"},"modified":"2021-02-27T01:27:10","modified_gmt":"2021-02-26T22:27:10","slug":"how-golden-globe-nominee-andra-day-became-billie-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-golden-globe-nominee-andra-day-became-billie-holiday\/","title":{"rendered":"#How Golden Globe nominee Andra Day became Billie Holiday"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#How Golden Globe nominee Andra Day became Billie Holiday<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

Billie Holiday sang \u201cAll of Me\u201d \u2014 and it took all of Andra Day<\/a> to play the legendary jazz chanteuse. <\/p>\n

From her Lady Day-inspired stage name to her jazzy delivery and retro style, Day has spent years paying homage to Holiday. Now, the \u201cRise Up\u201d singer is carrying her idol\u2019s torch in a different way, portraying her in the new film \u201cThe United States vs. Billie Holiday,\u201d<\/a> premiering Feb. 26 on Hulu.<\/p>\n

Still, she was \u201cterrified\u201d making her acting debut as the lady who sang the blues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I embarked on it, I was like, \u2018This is such a bad idea! I\u2019m not an actress.\u2019 And I didn\u2019t wanna ruin Billie\u2019s legacy,\u201d Day, born Cassandra Batie, told The Post.\u00a0 \u201cBut now I can look back and say, \u2018You know what? Maybe this was supposed to be.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, Day, 36, has already won critical acclaim for her performance in the upcoming Lee Daniels-directed drama. She\u2019s up for best actress in the dramatic film category at the Golden Globes on Feb. 28 and is also generating Oscar buzz.<\/p>\n

\"Audra
Andra Day lost 39 pounds and took up smoking to embody the iconic jazz singer, Billie Holiday.<\/figcaption>
Myriam Santos<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But transforming herself into the \u201cStrange Fruit\u201d songstress<\/a> was no holiday for Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s still a lot that I am working out in me from playing Billie,\u201d said Day, who is also nominated for best original song at the Globes for her soundtrack tune \u201cTigress & Tweed.\u201d \u201cShe gets in, you know what I mean? She gets ahold.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether it was battling a heroin addiction or being targeted by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Holiday\u2019s life was a struggle that required Day to go to some dark and difficult places. \u201cIt was a commitment,\u201d she said. \u201cI think it\u2019s one I\u2019m recovering from still.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such was Day\u2019s commitment that she took up smoking to play her cigarette-puffing character. \u201cI\u2019d never smoked cigarettes before,\u201d she said. \u201cJust starting out smoking, I was practicing with my acting coach \u2026 I was like, \u2018I want some of your American Spirits. That first day I was drinking vodka and smoking cigarettes, and I went home and threw up, like, five times!\u201d<\/p>\n

Day was able to kick the habit \u2014 eventually. \u201cI was able to quit ultimately once we finished the last pickup shots last year,\u201d she said. \u201cBut what I expected to be a four-, five- or six-month habit ended up turning into about a year and a half.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Billie
Billie Holiday in 1947 with her boxer, Mister.<\/figcaption>
Glasshouse Images\/Shutterstock<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She also poured down the booze to play Holiday, who died at 44 in 1959 of complications from cirrhosis caused by alcohol abuse. \u201cI drank a lot of gin, I drank bourbon,\u201d said Day. \u201cI hadn\u2019t drank in so long, and it was never really a big part of my life, even when I did when I was younger.\u201d<\/p>\n

While upping her alcohol and nicotine intake, Day also lost 39 pounds<\/a> to prepare for the role from the time she landed the part in early 2018 until shooting began in fall 2019. \u201cI was losing it healthily throughout that [period], and then once it got closer to shooting, that\u2019s when I let everyone know, \u2018OK, I\u2019m gonna just kinda starve myself at this point!\u2019 \u201d she said.<\/p>\n

After that pound purge, Day said, \u201cI\u2019ve actually just recently started to gain back a little bit of weight. I\u2019m up to, like, 140, which is good, \u2019cause I was 124 on set.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Andra
Andra Day, portraying songstress Billie Holiday in a scene from \u201cThe United States vs. Billie Holiday\u201d.<\/figcaption>
Hulu<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Other aspects of her Billie-inspired makeover came more naturally to Day. <\/p>\n

When she released her Grammy-nominated debut album, \u201cCheers to the Fall,\u201d in 2015, you could hear echoes of Holiday in her sound and see them in her style \u2014 complete with flowers in her hair as a nod to the jazzwoman\u2019s signature gardenia.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was really innovative fashionwise. And it was a part of her activism,\u201d said\u00a0Day. \u201cShe just was like, \u2018Why can\u2019t I wear fur coats or diamond earrings or fancy shoes like a white Hollywood starlet does?\u2019 That was very much a part of her living her life as a free, liberated black queer woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Diana
Day faces comparisons to Diana Ross (above), who played Holiday in 1972\u2019s \u201cLady Sings the Blues\u201d.<\/figcaption>
Courtesy Everett Collection<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The movie alludes to a romance between Holiday and actress Tallulah Bankhead (Natasha Lyonne<\/a>). \u201cI think her and Tallulah really loved each other,\u201d said Day. \u201cI do think that Billie was able to be herself and more vulnerable with women in a way that she wasn\u2019t really able to do with men. And I\u2019m so glad they put that in there \u2026 We\u2019re often writing queer stories, trans stories, out of our history, and we can\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, Holiday\u2019s bisexuality was not explored at all in the 1972 biopic \u201cLady Sings the Blues.\u201d As for any comparison to the star of that classic \u2014 Diana Ross, who earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination \u2014 Day definitely isn\u2019t trying to compete with the Motown diva.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou might see comments that no one can top Diana and all those things,\u201d she said, \u201cand in my mind, I\u2019m gonna agree! Of course I can\u2019t.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#How Golden Globe nominee Andra Day became Billie Holiday” Billie Holiday sang \u201cAll of Me\u201d \u2014 and it took all of Andra Day to play the legendary jazz chanteuse. From her Lady Day-inspired stage name to her jazzy delivery and retro style, Day has spent years paying homage to Holiday. Now, the \u201cRise Up\u201d singer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":190807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/02\/audra-day-billy-holiday-feature.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[95308,61072,59879,1417,91845,78775,89341],"class_list":["post-190806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-2-26-21","tag-billie-holiday","tag-diana-ross","tag-golden-globes","tag-golden-globes-2021","tag-lee-daniels","tag-smoking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}