Gabby Sidibe Interview

Nov. 17, 2009

The Detroit News

Toronto -- Gabby Sidibe is a most unlikely movie star.

For one thing, she still works a 9-to-5 job as a clerk in New York City.

For another she is a big-boned black woman from Harlem who had never seriously acted in her life -- until she was suddenly the star of perhaps the year's most talked-about film.

That movie would be "Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire." And here Gabby -- her proper name is Gabourey -- sits in a swank hotel in the midst of the Toronto International Film Festival in September promoting the film, which opens Friday.

Last night, she attended an opulent, star-studded party (co-star Mariah Carey, Robert De Niro, singer Mary J. Blige) before going to the film's premiere. The film has gained the backing of both Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry and is considered an awards season frontrunner.

Now it's early the next morning, Gabby's in a chair, a breakfast muffin waiting within reach. With all this exposure, all this hoopla, what are her plans?

"I plan to eat that muffin," she says with a laugh.

No, about acting, about landing more roles in movies.

"I'm trying, but not super-trying," she says.

"I would love to act and I think it's a lot of fun, but I'm not studying it," she says, and laughs again.

In "Precious," Sidibe, 26, plays the title character, a teen girl who is pregnant with her second child by her own father, constantly berated by her monstrous mother (played by Mo'Nique), grossly overweight and socially ostracized.

It's a harrowing role, the sort that might consume some actors. But not the novice Sidibe, who was pushed to audition for it by one of her college instructors.

"It's not like it was me," she says. "Everyone asks what it was like to play this role and if it took such an emotional toll on me, but it didn't. Not that it was a job, but Precious is Precious and I am me, and so I never got those lines crossed."

In fact, crossing those lines, as method actors sometimes do, seems a bit silly to her.

"Those people are crazy. I don't know how they do it. I know some actors are method -- that seems really, really strenuous to me," she says.

"I think Jim Carrey, whenever he's filming a movie, he stays in that character. Really? Was he walking around being the Grinch?

"That's insane! I could never do that, I'm far too lazy," Sidibe says.

While Sidibe doesn't seem lazy at all, she does seem full of humor, upbeat and entirely comfortable in her own skin. All things that Precious isn't. But Sidibe could still relate to the character.

"We're both from Harlem and she reminds me of friends that I've had, growing up," Sidibe says. "We're pretty much from the same cloth."

The key to playing Precious, Sidibe says, was realizing that everything that looks horrible to the audience seems normal for Precious.

"The audience is taking a peek at her life, but to her it's just Tuesday, it's a normal day, it's five o'clock. And so I tried to treat it as such: This is her life," Sidibe says.

"Nothing in my life is such a big deal. I go to an office each day, it's nothing to get super intense about or worried over, because it's a normal day. And so that's the way I kind of tried to treat the things that she goes through," she says.

The result is a powerful portrayal that comes across as startlingly real. If Sidibe doesn't find more roles it will be the world's loss. But for now, she still has her 9-to-5 gig as a clerk. Which she expects to keep.

"To be fair, it's my first film, and it's an independent film -- we mustn't assume that I'm rich," Sidibe says. "I had a job before, I have to continue to have a job. It's not like I'm Mariah, I'm not Mo'Nique. I didn't come to this film with a longstanding career, so I work."

And whatever comes after she eats that muffin will come.

"I don't have any answers," she says with a smile. "I'm just going to ride it. I'm just going to coast."