  Oscar-nominated actress Taraji P. Henson. (Veronica Henri/ Sun Media) |
Oscar and Taraji are now best friends forever.
Oscar is an Academy Award, of course. His new BFF is Taraji P. Henson, nominated as best supporting actress for her sterling work as Queenie in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
“This is a good time!” Henson tells Sun Media about her hectic life since the Oscar nominations were announced.
We are talking this week because Benjamin Button just debuted on DVD and Blu-ray in splendid Criterion Collection editions.
The extras include sessions with Henson, as well as co-stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett and director David Fincher.
Henson did not even win the Academy Award in February. Penelope Cruz took this category for Vicky Cristina Barcelona. But Oscar’s golden glow has enveloped Henson anyway.
“It’s lovely,” Henson enthuses about the effect on her life and career. Oscar night was a treasure because she took her mother and grandmother to the ceremony. It was “incredible” to watch her grandmother “so full of pride and joy,” Henson remembers.
“She just kept saying: ‘I’m so proud of you baby!’ She’s 85, so imagine what she has seen in her lifetime. Now we have a black president and one of her own is being nominated for an Oscar!”
Not that Henson is a different person, or a different actress, since that exciting experience.
“No, not at all,” she says. “That is funny. Guys, I’ve been around for like 10 years now. You’re just catching up. Thank you, Oscar!” She recalls her excitement on nomination day.
“It was a whirlwind. I got the nomination and I got picked up 10 minutes after to go do interviews, and it was non-stop until the day after the Oscars. Then it was like a withdrawal.
“But then the phone starting ringing. And, the next thing you know, I had three movies lined up, all of which I didn’t have to audition for. They were straight offers. So that is how my career has changed since then.”
Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Henson is 38. She made her screen debut in an episode of TV’s Sister Sister in 1997. Other TV credits include appearances on ER, Felicity, House M.D. and, most significantly, Boston Legal.
Film credits started with Streetwise (1998) and evolved to bigger roles in Hustle & Flow (as Shug), Smokin’ Aces, Talk to Me, the Tyler Perry movie The Family That Preys and the marriage drama Not Easily Broken.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, however, is “the very pinnacle” of her career to date, Henson says.
“I’m very proud to have been part of such an epic movie and something that is going to be talked about long after I’m gone. But, to be very honest, although I don’t forget about it, it seems so long ago, even if it wasn’t, because I’m just back working now. So I don’t even really talk about it much until somebody brings it up or I have to do an interview, because I’m going on to the next project, you know.”
Henson will soon be simultaneously shooting two new movies. One is a mainstream Hollywood comedy called Date Night with Tina Fey and Steve Carell, both of whom she loves as comedians.
“I’m so looking forward to that!”
The other is a small indie movie called Peep World, a romantic comedy. Rainn Wilson is her love interest. She has three other movies — Hurricane Season, Once Fallen and I Can Do Bad All by Myself (another Tyler Perry project) — in post-production. So Henson is enjoying her new-found fame.
“But I honestly don’t want what Brad and Angie have to go through (with their fame),” Henson says about her Button co-star and his partner Angelina Jolie.
“Although they handle it so well.” Pitt, says Henson, was wonderful to her on set as she played the selfless woman who raises him from birth after he is dumped on her doorstep.
“He is one of the most down-to-earth, big-time celebrities that I have ever met in my life. Very warm and generous. The moment I met him, he made me feel that I have known him for years.”
Now Henson finds herself in the inner circle, too.
DVD features special effects bonus
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, as a $329.8-million box-office hit worldwide, does not really need a push to do well on DVD, too. But some of her other movies — including Talk to Me and Not Easily Broken — may need help, Oscar nominee Tariji P. Henson says.
“Not everyone goes out to the theatre,” Henson tells Sun Media about the public appetite for DVD. “Talk to Me didn’t really do well in the theatres but people are finding it now on DVD. That is among my work that I am most proud of,” she says of the filmed-in-Toronto project.
“I love that (the DVD phenomenon) because your work can live on.”
Henson was nominated as best supporting actress for playing Queenie in Benjamin Button. Button arrived on DVD this week, with hoopla. More modestly, Not Easily Broken debuted on April 7.
Henson co-stars with Morris Chestnut as a stressed married couple whose relationship is floundering.
“For me,” Henson says of the themes layered into Bill Duke’s movie, “it really puts in black and white that all relationships come with work — and not just marriage.”
The modest DVD includes an interesting making-of featurette. The Benjamin Button DVD is on a huge scale, in comparison.
“You get to go behind the scenes, especially on a film like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” Henson says of the benefits of bonus materials.
“You get to see how they did all those special effects. On DVD, we have three hours of how we made it happen. And I can’t wait to see it myself because even I don’t know how they made it happen!”
bruce.kirkland@sunmedia.ca
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