JUST SAY NONA
W magazine, December
2001
Previously known for her singing - and her father - Nona Gaye steps into
the ring as an actress in Ali.
When Nona Gaye landed a coveted audition for Ali, the big-budget drama starring Will Smith
as the legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, she might have been expected to play it
cool. The daughter of the late soul singer Marvin Gaye (to whom she bears a striking resemblance) had plenty of
exposure to celebrity as a child, even meeting Ali on one occasion.
"Muhammad was so captivating," she recalls. "He leaned down and
said, 'You look just like your daddy.' It was intense."
Still, neither that
experience nor her singing career was enough to dispel the butterflies Gaye felt when, just a few days out of
acting school, she sat down with Smith to read for the role of Ali second wife, Belinda. It was her
first professional audition.
"I was so nervous
that my lip was shaking and my stomach was growling, loudly," she recalls
over coffee at a
"Nona had something that I saw on the very first audition tape,"
remembers director Michael Mann. "Not only does she have a real presence,
but she also has that rare quality of being able to let an audience know what
she's thinking even as she's trying to repress it."
When Mann called to tell
her she'd won the job, Gaye
says, "I just started crying"
Now, less than a year
later, the 27-year-old is generating strong buzz for her turn as Belinda, who
married Ali when she was just 17. "She was raised a Muslim, which is what
attracted Muhammad, since he had converted to Islam by that time," says Gaye, "but he really liked her
because she was spunky and not intimidated by the fact that he was the
heavyweight champ." In preparation for the film's five-month shoot on
location in
The film, which treats
Ali as both a sports figure and a cultural icon, closely examines his
conversion to Islam in 1964 (Jamie Foxx portrays Ali's spiritual guide, Drew
Brown, and Mario Van Peebles plays Malcolm X). Given the recent terrorist
attacks, Gaye says, "It
will be really interesting to see how people react." She expects that
Ali's standing as one of the nation's few genuine heroes--and his active
participation in the film--will outweigh any controversy that might arise.
"I know that's what will draw people in," she says. "Ali was all
over the set, and it was nice to have him there because his mind is still
really sharp. It was like, 'Good, Muhammad is down with everything.'
"Besides," she
adds with a laugh, "he remembered me. He said I still looked like my
dad."
Marvin Gaye's only daughter (she has an older
half brother, Marvin Jr., and a younger brother, Frank), Nona was raised in
What she retained were
many memories--both good and bad--and a growing sense of obligation to carry on
her father's creative legacy "I wish I didn't, but I feel that all the
time," she says with a shake of her head. "It's the whole thing of
the public missing them that gets transferred to you. It's like, 'He isn't here,
so could you please do it now?"'
Although Gaye first tried to answer that call
with music--recording her debut album, Love for the Future, at 18 and performing a duet with Prince on one of
his albums--her singing career has been only marginally successful. After a
brief stint as a Ford model ("I couldn't keep my weight down, and I was
like, whatever," Gaye
says), she took several years off to raise her son, Nolan, four, as a single
mother. Then two years ago, she decided to give acting a try "I was always
interested in it, but I never knew it would move me as much as it does,"
she says.
Now, with Ali set for a holiday release and
another album in the works, Gaye
seems to have found her own career path, as well as a sense of peace about her
relationship to her father. "I went through a long period where I couldn't
listen to his music, but now I can," she says. "Now he can come on
the radio and I can just say, 'Hi, Dad."
- HILARY DE VRIES