Sophie Okonedo speaks with a posh British accent, but you'd never know it seeing The Secret Life of Bees, in which she plays an emotionally disturbed Southern woman. And Sophie Okonedo is 40, but you'd never know it even if you met her in person-- she may have cut a deal with the devil to look as amazing as she does.
But looks didn't matter in her role in Bees, playing May, the middle of three Boatwright sisters, who take in orphan Lily (Dakota Fanning) and her caretaker Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson) and change their lives in the process. Okonedo spoke to New York journalists last month about participating in the film, and the effect the book had on her when she first read it, changing everything from her breakfast preferences to her soap. And even though the movie was filmed in North Carolina, part of the filming process involved pretending to jump off the top of Rockefeller Center. What was it like when you met Latifah and Alicia in New York before shooting?
We only met once, and we had dinner, which lasted quite a few hours. We just talked about our characters. Gina asked us why we each took the roles that we took, and what the film meant to us. Then we ended up all getting on really well, and we stayed up late talking about life, love. I spent a bit of time with Tristan [Wilds, who plays Zach], because he was around. He took me up-- what's the big tall...? Rockefeller Center. I have a picture of me and him doing that thing where it looks like we're jumping off.
How did you and Latifah establish the relationship between the sisters. especially since you two are about the same age.
I don't know how we related. We just both worked on the script and we came with what was written. Queen is so warm, so vivacious, and instantly you want to be her friend when you meet her. She has that kind of warmth. I always kind of want to be where Queen is, because I know I can have a bit of fun. So it was easy, you know, to have that dynamic between us.
Gina said that the other actresses took pay cuts. How did you make that decision?
I never do things for money-- I wouldn't say I never do things for money, but I mostly don't do things for money. To get away from my daughter, it had better be good.
How did the story resonate for you personally?
Well I've always been interested int he civil rights movement, from a teenager. I knew the basic stuff, because I was very interested in that history. As a young black girl growing up in London, I was looking for places where people had changed things, where there had been great progression. The period was very interesting to me. I just loved the book. I remember just thinking, oh, it oozes humanity, that book. I read it in like a day and a half. I just remember ordering everything with honey afterwards. I went and bought honey cream bath, and honey lotion. I was just stinking with honey. It was a tasty read.
What drew you to the character of May?
I just think the duality of her, the enormous kind of grief that she holds, and how she deals with it. She contained a lot of-- like an open wound-- of the civil rights movement. She was the kind of symbolic embodiment. I thought the film was great, all these aspects of being a woman. It's got this whole gamut.
