‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’: Fact-Checking the Whitney Houston Biopic

No one will accuse Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody of glossing over the turbulent life of Whitney Houston. In its two-plus hours, the movie, which was authorized by Houston’s family and was co-produced by her music mentor Clive Davis, features a multi-layered performance by British actress Naomi Ackie, whose lip-synching to Houston’s vocals is incredibly convincing. The movie doesn’t skimp on scenes of Houston in the possession of drugs, kissing and frolicking with her close companion (and future creative director) Robyn Crawford, going into rehab, asserting her views on which songs were right or wrong for her and brawling with Bobby Brown

Directed by Kasi Lemmons and written by Anthony McCarten (of Bohemian Rhapsody fame), the movie gets plenty of basics about her life right. We see her upbringing as a gospel singer, her stern training by way of her mother Cissy Houston, the way she went along with industry and family pressure to distance herself from Crawford, recreations of her music videos and her signing day with Davis, her comebacks (both successful and not), the time she and her father John clashed over his alleged mishandling of her money, and a dramatization of the night she accidentally drowned (with the help of drugs) in a hotel room in L.A. It also reminds you, once more, of how deeply tragic and disturbing it was that Houston’s life, and voice, were wrecked. 

As factually accurate as much of I Wanna Dance with Somebody appears to be, though, a few moments still made us wonder.    

Houston’s family was so freaked about her close and at the times intimate relationship with Crawford that Houston’s father John suggested they start dating “young men” in public.

Apparently so. After Houston’s first album took off, she decided to hire the loyal and steadfast Crawford (Nafessa Williams) as part of her team, depicted in a scene where both women visit John Houston at his workplace. Wary of Crawford and perhaps in denial about his daughter’s private life, he begrudgingly goes along with the idea but only before making that very suggestion about their public lives. The story is also included in Crawford’s 2019 memoir, A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston. As the movie also shows, Houston went along with her father’s idea, starting with a fling with her duet partner Jermaine Jackson.

At the Soul Train Awards in 1989, Houston lost to Janet Jackson, met Brown and was booed, all in the same evening.

Yes and no: The movie conflates two different Soul Train ceremonies. In 1988, Houston did lose to Jackson (for Best Music Video) and was on the receiving end of a negative reaction from the crowd when her name was announced. (At the time, the Houston backlash — that she and her music weren’t “Black enough” — was building; the phrase “Whitey Houston,” seen on protest signs in these scenes, was indeed uttered a lot back then, including by Rev. Al Sharpton.) But Houston didn’t actually attend the awards that year. In 1989, she did show up, was booed again, and that time lost to Anita Baker in the R&B Soul Single, Female category. Still, that was the evening she met Brown, who was sitting in front of her and, as the film shows, only turned around after she had teasingly bumped the back of his head a few times.  

The white tracksuit she wore for her 1991 Super Bowl performance was a statement of defiance.

Maybe. In the movie, Houston is preparing for what will be one of her career highlights, singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the big game, when several racks of glittery gowns are rolled in. She rejects them all, saying she wants to be herself — a reference to the way she wore jeans and a sweater to her record-signing day with Davis, and perhaps to that “street” side of herself, as she describes it in the film. But according to Crawford’s memoir, the weather was a factor: “What am I going to do? I’m going to be freezing in that dress!” she told Crawford, who wrote that she suggested Houston opt for a tracksuit they’d already brought along.

Houston freaked out in a limo when she heard Brown had impregnated another woman.

Seems unlikely. In his memoir, Every Little Step, Brown recounts the day he proposed to Houston in the back of a limo and pulled out a massive engagement ring. That moment is included in the film, but did he confess right then and there that his former girlfriend was pregnant with his baby, and did Houston tell the driver to stop and then step out into full-blown traffic? According to Crawford, Houston learned about the baby by way of a phone call from Brown, and the Brown-authorized Bobby Brown Story miniseries on BET shows a backstage confrontation. Whatever happened, the conclusion to the drama — Brown convincing her that it was the two of them “against the world” and Houston forgiving him, for the moment — seems accurate. 

When she heard about the plot of The Bodyguard, she literally threw the script in the trash.

Again, questionable. As I Wanna Dance with Somebody shows, it was indeed Houston who wanted to pursue movie roles. (The movie doesn’t mention it, but at the time she was dating Eddie Murphy, which may have influenced her.) We see Davis (played by Stanley Tucci) handing Houston a script for a movie about a pop star and her relationship with her bodyguard. Instantly dismissive, Houston throws the script into a garbage pail — but then pulls it back out when Davis adds that her co-star would be Kevin Costner. It’s played as a surprise, but according to Crawford’s book, though, Costner had been reaching out to Houston for years, gently coaxing her into taking the role.

After spurning Davis’ plea for her to go to rehab, she finally entered one of those centers, about a year after her father’s death.

Indeed. Houston was deeply affected by John Houston’s death in 2003, from heart disease and diabetes. In the biopic, we see her rejecting Davis’ plea to go into rehab, insisting she has her problem under control, before she finally is carted away after John’s death. But the movie makes it seem as if that was her only stint; in fact, she also checked into facilities like that at least twice more. By lurching from her swimming in a rehab-center pool to her comeback appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2009, the movie completely skips over most of the 2000s, including her participation in their exploitative reality series Being Bobby Brown. So don’t count on seeing a recreation of “Hell to the no!” — or even the infamous “crack is wack” comment from her Diane Sawyer interview in 2002.

Houston didn’t attend her father’s funeral.

Yes. Although she and her father were reportedly close, she began suspecting him of dipping into her money once he took over as her manager. As the movie shows, she began looking at his accounting books, and his company wound up suing her for $100 million on the grounds of helping her sign a new record deal and dealing with a pot bust in Hawaii. Whether they had a confrontation about it in the hospital, as seen onscreen, is hard to say.

According to Bobby Brown, he left Houston, not the other way around.

Depends who one asks. Fresh out of rehab, or so the movie plays out, Houston meets Brown in what looks like a hotel bar, hands him back her wedding ring and, to his shock, declares the marriage over. For what it’s worth, Brown maintains he was the one who ended the marriage, largely over her drug use. “The reality is that I walked away… with about $1,000 and a one-way plane ticket to Los Angeles,” he wrote in his memoir.  

Houston’s drugs were delivered by way of a pen.

Starting with an early scene showing Cissy and John Houston fighting in the family’s New Jersey home as their kids, Whitney included, take refuge upstairs with the help of a bong, I Wanna Dance with Somebody doesn’t shy away from its subject’s drug use. It doesn’t delve into Houston’s coke habit dating back to the mid-’80s; her first major tour, 1986’s “The Greatest Love Tour,” was nicknamed “The Greatest Drug Tour” by a band member, due to the excesses of many involved, including its star. But when it comes to that creepy pen, the filmmakers seem to have it right. After Houston’s death, a dealer confessed that, posing as a fan, he would approach Houston for an autograph and hand her a pen packed with more than three grams of cocaine. In the last of those scenes, the blue pen is seen in her hotel bathroom counter as she prepares to take her final bath. The coroner’s report on her cause of death did indeed list cocaine as one of the factors — so that final fact is, sadly, all too accurate. 

From Rolling Stone US.