Gabrielle Union: Riding the power of the pom-pom to roles that have Hollywood heavies cheerleading for her

Interview, Sept, 2002 by Nicole Vecchiarelli

When Gabrielle Union signed on to do the 2000 cheer-tacular Bring It On, the now 29-year-old actress was, she admits, underestimating the power of the pom-pom. The movie is a cult favorite among a sometimes unlikely group of admirers, including George Clooney, who cast Union in the crime caper he co-produced, Welcome to Collinwood (out next month). Union, who also co-starred in The Brothers, has a modern combination of brassiness and grace that filmmakers find irresistible, and that audiences now have ample opportunity to discover. In addition to Collinwood, Union plays opposite Katie Holmes and Benjamin Bratt in Abandon (also out next month), directed by Traffic's Oscar-winning screenwriter Stephen Gaghan, and stars with LL Cool J in Deliver Us From Eva, a comedy due early next year.

NICOLE VECCHIARELLI: Bring It On came out two years ago, but people still rave about it.

GABRIELLE UNION: You can't pinpoint a Bring It On fan. Closeted adults watch it as much as eight-year-old girls. I'll meet guys in elevators in office buildings and they'll say to me, "I started watching it because of my daughter, but now I'm addicted." Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney, who produced Collinwood, had seen it, as had [the directors] the Russo brothers. But Collinwood was a very different kind of project [from Bring It On]. It was surreal, seeing my cast chair next to William Macy's and Sam Rockwell's.

NV: You have a small supporting role in Collinwood, but you make the most of it. Your character's full of electricity.

GU: Thank you. She changed a bit, to say the least, as the movie progressed. Originally she was supposed to be blind, but Anthony and Joe [Russo] told me my blind thing was a buzz kill, so they asked me to be more of a hustler. It was a complete 180, but I couldn't have asked for a better experience. They had seen something in me that I hadn't seen in myself, and when people you respect see something in you that you didn't know you had, it's amazing. I have low self-esteem as an actress because I'm not formally trained--everything I've learned, I've learned from doing it--so I fear people will discover I'm a fraud or something.

NV: How did you become interested in acting?

GU: I modeled when I got out of UCLA to pay back my student loans and one thing led to another. You know, looking back, modeling was harder than auditioning: If you don't get a part in a movie, you can blame it on chemistry or something, but when you don't get a modeling job, it's like, "Sorry, you're not pretty enough." Anyway, I still feel like I have a lot to learn about acting. I do love comedy, though, because it comes the easiest. It's what's most natural to me.

NV: Do you get a lot of funny scripts?

GU: Well, I get a lot of scripts, but not that many funny ones. But I can be really wrong about things like that: I couldn't see that Bring It On was funny when I first read it. What attracted me to it was the idea of these [white] girls stealing black culture. They [the filmmakers] gave me the freedom to change things as we were shooting because there were one or two lines in there that once I'd read, I asked, "You don't know a lot of black people, do you? You've never been to Compton, have you? If you put this [line] in there, you're going get picketed by the NAACP!"

NV: You've made choices that are usually one extreme or the other: You're either in a movie where the entire cast is black, or you're the only black actress in an otherwise all-white cast.

GU: Yeah. Definitely. There's really something to be said for being in a "black movie." There's automatic respect on a black set and the comfort level is higher--there'll be someone there who knows how to do your hair, your makeup--and you don't have to bear the burden of being the only black person in the movie.

NV: So you must've enjoyed working on Eva.

Nicole Vecchiarelli is a New York-based writer and editor.

GU: It was awesome. It was with the same director I worked with on The Brothers [Gary Hardwick]. And then there's LL [Cool J]--he's the best. And I'm keeping my rapper streak alive. I've worked DMX, Lil' Kim and now LL. Supposedly, Halle Berry was cast in my role, but she's a little busy these days. [laughs] When she fell out I was like, I'm down!