Janelle Monáe Takes One Giant Leap

Janelle Monáe’s music was already out of this world. But now, after taking one small step into Hollywood with a role in Oscar favorite Moonlight, she’s taken the next big jump forward with Hidden Figures, playing a bold Space Age pioneer.

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Not much about Janelle Monáe says “Homo sapiens.” The tailored intergalactic-butler uniform. The massive voice in the maybe-five-foot frame. Even her skin looks airbrushed. So it isn’t surprising that when asked how old she is, she replies, “I’m timeless.” Maybe she’s an android. “I look at androids as the future Other,” she says, her empathy for the marginalized extending to A.I. “I feel a responsibility to speak out for the Other.” In her new film, Hidden Figures, about a different kind of Other—badass black women working for NASA in the 1960s—Monáe actually plays a computer. (NASA called its mathematicians “computers.”) Her character doesn’t take shit. Neither does Monáe. “I want to redefine what it means to be young, black, wild, and free in America,” she says. It’s jarring to see someone so in control of her image submit herself to the demands of a studio and director. But Monáe doesn’t flinch at temporarily shelving monochromatic space diva for important movies like the awards-season hit Moonlight. Of course, she also has bigger ideas: “I want to see more black people. Not just in films like Moonlight. Big-budget films, too.” And since the life span of an android is probably, like, 500 years, Monáe will have plenty of time to give the Hollywood muckety-mucks a run for their money.

Article Appeared @http://www.gq.com/story/janelle-monae-takes-one-giant-leap

 

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