Andra Day, 36, has lost nearly 40 lbs. to transform into jazz singer Billie Holiday (real name Eleanora Fagan) for the upcoming biopic, The United States vs. Billie Holiday, which arrives on Hulu next month.
Day said that she prepared for the role of Holiday by smoking and drinking alcohol, which she said she does not recommend to others due to health concerns.
In an interview with Variety, Day said, “I basically abused my body for a long time. I’m joking and not really joking.”
“I got the role at the very top of 2018,” Day recalled. “Reading everything I could get my hands on. Listening to every interview. Apparently, I exhausted the internet of Billie Holiday photos. Apparently, the internet will tell you that you’ve reached the end.”
“I put my family through it; I put myself through it,” Day continued. “I went from 163 pounds to 124 pounds. I would talk like her and I don’t drink or smoke, but I started smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol. Not that I recommend people do this; I just was desperate because this is my first role. I just asked God to give me all of the pain and trauma. I asked him to give me her pain and give me her trauma.”
The Rise Up singer went on to say that she had to change her voice to sound just like Holiday while performing some of the late jazz legend’s greatest hits.
“That was an early decision that we made right away to do the singing,” Day said. “Every time I would sing a song I’d go, ‘Okay, Lee’s going to hear this and he’s going to fire me.’ But I wouldn’t have done it if they’d been, ‘Do it in your voice.’ That for me would have probably been a no. There’s victory and there is pain in her voice. So to me it was just like we’ve got to get it, we have to get it, you know what I mean?”
Earlier this month, Lee Daniels, the director of the film, told The Hollywood Reporter that he wanted the biopic to highlight Holiday’s less-covered role in the Civil Rights movement.
He said at the time, “When you think of Civil Rights leaders, you think of men. When you think of Billie Holiday, you think of this brilliant tortured jazz singer that happened to have been a drug addict.” “I didn’t know that she kicked off the Civil Rights movement,” Daniels added. “Before there was a Civil Rights movement, there was Billie Holiday and ‘Strange Fruit.’ The government saw that song as a threat and she was a target. That’s history and they keep it from us.”
