Andra Day was willing to go to great lengths for her portrayal of Billie Holiday.
The rising star, who experienced widespread success from her 2015 single “Rise Up,” was tapped to play the iconic jazz singer in the upcoming biopic, The United States vs. Billie Holiday.
In her W Magazine interview, which published on Feb. 23, the 36-year-old singer revealed what she underwent to physically transform into the late legend.
“I did some pretty extreme things for the character,” she confessed. “There was the drastic weight loss—I wanted to have a body that looked like that period in time. Starving myself made me very weak on set and slowed me down in a way that really helped with the scenes with heroin. Then I started smoking cigarettes; it made me feel like Billie. I’m very fast, and she’s like molasses. Smoking helped to drop me into those dark places.”
She also elaborated on the weight loss, noting, “I was originally 163 when I started. I got down to 124. I don’t necessarily recommend but to me, I didn’t want my body to look like a gym body of 2020 or 2019 at the time. For me, it was important having a period body.”
