“People are always asking me why or how I’m so confident,” says actress Gabourey Sidibe. “But what they really mean is why are you so confident.” Sidibe rejects the implication that she has not earned her confidence. The 36-year old actress has a series of impressive awards, including an Academy Award, under her belt. She also has a new memoir titled This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare.
The Academy Award winner will appear in the upcoming psychological/social horror movie Antebellum. However, the details of her role remain somewhat obscure.
This comes from the “top secret” nature of the film’s pre-release. Sidibe explains remarks on “a shroud of secrecy around this film,” citing “reasons that will be obvious once you see it.” Of course, building suspense does not hurt in racking up interest either.
Gabourey Sidibe: A “Fancy and Bougie” Role
“The future is a lot closer than we think, and so is the past,” Sidibe tells Marie Claire. To her, her latest project represents the necessity for social change. She considers this film a part of a growing genre of psychological thrillers based not on monster stories, but on real-life experiences.
She explains, “if you want to scare people, talk about what we survive every day that we might not survive tomorrow.” Although she cannot say much about the movie, Sidibe did reveal that her character, Dawn, is “sort of bougie and fancy” and that she “enjoyed the chance to pretend to be [like that].”
Sidibe will appear side-by-side with Janelle Monáe, Marque Richardson and Eric Lange in the upcoming film. One of the producers working on Antebellum, Sean McKittrick, worked on the box office hits Get Out and Us. Both films play upon similar themes as Antebellum. As a period piece set in the pre-Civil War South, it plays upon the theme that, in Sidibe’s words, “interactions with people who don’t believe that I deserve human rights – that’s more terrifying than any vampire or werewolf.”
Gabourey Sidibe Earned an Oscar and Golden Globe
Before her acting career, Sidibe studied psychology and worked as a phone sex-line operator. During this time, she received word of a casting call for the movie Precious. This role would go on to get her a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Actress in 2009. Since then, Sidibe has appeared extensively in indie films and on television shows such as American Horror Story and Empire as recurring characters.
Despite Sidibe’s initial fears of typecasting after her role in Precious, she has shown her flexibility as an actress and as a person. The earnestness of her performance put her at the risk of being perceived outside of the screen as the “beaten-down illiterate teenager” she portrayed on it. However, as more interviews surfaced and her career picked up, Sidibe has demonstrated her range and wit.
Channeling Discomfort Into Wit
Sidibe calls herself “a link on a chain of powerful women”. Her aunt, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, is a co-founder of Ms. Magazine and the Women’s Action Alliance, even earning praise from Oprah Winfrey as one of America’s “Great Moms.” Her mother, Alice Tan Ridley, appeared on America’s Got Talent up until the semi-finals of the competition, showing off her powerful voice after leaving a teaching career to pursue the arts. Her childhood in a Senegalese-American family, in which she was “too American” for her father, and the constant bodyshaming and other struggles shaped her into the perfect actress for her breakout role.
“I’ve been uncomfortable my whole life,” reflects Sidibe, “I just don’t want to be uncomfortable anymore.” Instead, she plans to bring her well-earned confidence to her next roles.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Antebellum’s release has been postponed. Follow this page for updates.
