I Wanna Dance With Anyone: Remembering Whitney Houston’s Main Oprah Comeback

For 1 / 4 of a century, The Oprah Winfrey Present was some of the influential forces in popular culture. 5 days every week, Oprah Winfrey—who turned a celebrity via the medium of TV—courted debates, shared human curiosity tales, and performed superstar interviews with everybody from Michael Jackson to Halle Berry to Tom Cruise. If a tv was on at 4 p.m., it was seemingly tuned to Oprah. So, it was on this present that Whitney Houston, the inimitable expertise whose legendary profession had been derailed by drug dependancy, positioned her massive profession comeback in 2009. Winfrey, credibly, touted Houston’s upcoming look as “essentially the most anticipated music interview of the last decade.”

That Oprah second is depicted within the new Houston biopic, I Wanna Dance With Anyone, starring British actor Naomi Ackie within the lead function. The film, nonetheless, depicts solely the efficiency Houston gave on the present, highlighting how her singing had been hampered by drug use however her stage presence and can to entertain was stronger than it had been in years. In actual life, Houston’s look included a revealing interview and was preceded by some vital context. It was her first main TV look since her devastating 2002 interview with Diane Sawyer, who pressed Houston about her drug use, resulting in the singer’s notorious denial of doing crack cocaine. “It was an unmitigated catastrophe,” Clive Davis wrote in his autobiography. “Whitney was guarded, imprecise, and defensive, and their dialog launched a thousand parodies.” I Wanna Dance With Anyone, for which Davis served as a producer, doesn’t depict the Sawyer interview, declining to recreate one of many singer’s worst public moments. 

The biopic, centered firmly on Houston, additionally doesn’t depict Being Bobby Brown, the 2005 Bravo actuality collection starring Bobby Brown, which Houston frequently appeared on, regardless of criticism that she was too unwell (and, frankly, too nice a star) to be on the present. By then, Brown had been out and in of jail and was additionally a tough drug person. The present drew excessive rankings however was canceled after  one season; Houston and Brown later divorced in 2007. Houston largely retreated from the highlight after that, although she nonetheless made public appearances at occasions like Clive Davis’s Grammy social gathering. She additionally drew headlines in 2008 for delivering a uncommon efficiency on the Plymouth Jazz Pageant, the place she sang solely seven songs in half-hour, for which she was reportedly paid $3 million. She struggled vocally, elevating considerations that the comeback for her upcoming album, I Look to You, was going to be an ill-conceived mess. 

Then got here the Oprah interview. Houston and Winfrey meet on the City Corridor theater in New York Metropolis, seated on the stage reverse one another in brilliant purple chairs. Houston, who carried out there when she was 13 alongside her mom, Cissy Houston, chosen the venue for its sentimental worth. “It was on this stage that all of it occurred for me,” Houston recalled, her voice deep and raspy. “I used to be this little, tiny woman with this massive voice.” The voice, Winfrey reminds her. Houston laughs, saying. “You’re the primary person who referred to as me that overwhelming title.” 

Within the two-part interview, which runs a little bit greater than an hour, Winfrey warmly however firmly drills down on Houston’s marriage with Brown. Houston, in return, is extremely candid, able to reply any query tossed her means. She’s calm and managed, a world away from her erratic, combative look with Sawyer.