Tasha Smith really knows how to shake up the scene. The break-out star of Tyler Perry's latest hit movie Why Did I Get Married? held court during the Lincoln Lounge symposium, held October 27th at Los Angeles Sofitel Hotel, as one of the most prized events during the 2007 American Black Film Festival. Along with acclaimed casting director Robi Reed, Smith – who is a noted acting coach, in her own right – dished on the ins and outs of Black Hollywood and how to break into it. Smith, who has appeared on Tyra Banks' wildly popular reality series America's Next Top Model and debuted in Perry's overlooked Daddy's Little Girls, pulled no punches as she opened up to the audience about her previous life of stripping and drug hustling in her hometown of Camden, New Jersey.It was definitely real talk – for real.
Backstage at the event, the tall and statuesque bronze beauty chatted with The BV Newswire about the Donna Summer biopic that she is readying as her next vehicle. "It's a movie we've been working on and we're excited," she revealed. We're still in the development stages of it but I will be playing Donna Summer, it's just telling her life story."
Summer, the legendary Academy Award winning singer known as "The Queen of Disco," catapulted to the top of the 1970s pop music stratosphere with hit songs such as Last Dance, I Feel Love, McArthur Park, and Love to Love You Baby. "It will show the transformation of her life," Smith added about the film, which may or may not be adapted from Summer's 2003 autobiography Ordinary Girl. "A lot of people don't really know all that she has gone through from a young girl to teenage moving to Europe and trying to start on her career, and her different marriages and the drugs and her transformation with Christianity and all of that."
When probed of Summer's involvement in the forthcoming biopic, Smith professed her affinity for the five-time Grammy Award winning dance diva (born: LaDonna Adrian Gaines), but added, "I put it to you like this, hopefully she'll be a part of it ... but it still will happen."
Smith and Reed plan to have the project ready for release within the next two years. "We're very focused, we want to do it," Reed said. "No, I can't" Smith gushed when asked if she could sing. So what will she do about the music in the movie? "I'm going to do the same thing that Angela Bassett did," she quipped, referring to Bassett's 1992 Oscar Award nominated turn as Tina Turner in What's Love Got Do with It?
Source: AOL BlackVoices
