WATCH: Tiffany Boone Speaks On Becoming Gwen Fontaine

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Actress Tiffany Boone talks about becoming Gwen Fontaine, wife of Huey P. Newton. &quot;It was really just me trying to search out any little line, anything about her that I could possibly find because she&#039;s a very private person.&quot;

Transcript

00:00 In the Big Sikar, you play Huey Newton's wife, Gwen.

00:04 Tell me, what was that preparation process for you

00:06 when you were preparing for that role?

00:09 Yeah, it was really just me trying

00:12 to search out any little line, anything about her

00:15 that I could possibly find, because she's

00:17 a very private person.

00:18 And so there's no interviews.

00:21 There's no-- there's a good two handfuls of pictures.

00:25 And a lot of times, I just have to read a bunch of stuff

00:28 about Huey and hope that somebody would

00:30 mention something about Gwen.

00:31 So it was a lot of reading and research

00:34 and trying to look for things.

00:35 But also, it was just trying to fill in the blank spots

00:39 with Andre so that we could make sure that she was full

00:43 and their relationship had a full, well-rounded thing

00:47 for the show.

00:48 So that's interesting that you said that.

00:50 And filling in those blanks, since you

00:52 said she was really private and there wasn't a whole lot

00:55 of information about her, how did

00:57 you go about filling in those blanks?

00:59 And how did you implement, I guess,

01:01 your own style or your own little twist to the character?

01:07 Yeah, I mean, for us, talking to Andre a lot,

01:11 we were just really protective over their love story,

01:15 just showing a Black love story like theirs.

01:19 And so for me, filling in those gaps was like--

01:21 I feel like it would be really easy to just be like,

01:23 oh, Gwen was just this ride-or-die chick who

01:26 just followed him around and told him yes whenever.

01:30 And I think it's very easy to just be like,

01:32 she was in love with him, so she just went to Cuba with him.

01:35 But I think for us, it was making it more complicated

01:38 than that, because it was.

01:39 And I think even in the things that I read,

01:42 people were like, she was the person

01:44 that he could be himself with and who really saw him.

01:47 And she didn't take any BS.

01:49 So it was like, how do we fill that in?

01:51 How do we make the balance between her

01:53 being this really fierce woman who, like, a lot of pictures

01:57 you see of her, she's looking like this at everybody.

02:00 You know what I mean?

02:01 But obviously, there was a softness there.

02:02 She was a mother, and she loved him deeply.

02:05 So we just tried to make sure that every scene,

02:08 we can show a little bit of softness, playfulness,

02:10 joy, and the hard conversations they had to have.

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