Queen Latifah stepped into Deadline’s studio at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and gave Deadline the low-down on the upcoming project about her life, and playing Robyn McCall in The Equalizer.
Queen Latifah’s Flavor Unit Entertainment is a producer on the biopic, which will be one of several about hip-hop’s most iconic stars. “We’ve partnered up to work with Westbrook [Studios] and Jesse Collins Entertainment…we figured we would create these. I’m going to be one of the first to do it. Will [Smith] is going to do his as well, and he’s also integral in my story.”
The big question for Queen Latifah was, who will play her? “This is going to be big casting,” she said. “I’ve been doing this since I was 17-years-old, but there was the lead up to it, so someone has to be able to play those different parts of it.”
As a young breakout hip-hop star, it took time to learn how to deal with newfound stardom, she said. “I was like, there’s no way I can live up to this, this ‘Queen Latifah’, she’s a business, she’s much bigger than who I am. I had to come to grips with that.” Work is underway on the biopic. “We’re writing…it’s gonna take a minute.”
The star also told us that she’s decompressing after The Equalizer, the CBS series she starred in and exec produced, and which recently came to an end after five seasons.
Queen Latifah played Robyn McCall and didn’t rule out fans seeing her character again. “When it comes to The Equalizer universe, anything is possible. I put a lot of who I am into Robyn McCall, so it’s definitely possible to see more iterations of who she is, different versions, maybe.”