Leslie Odom Jr & Andra Day - Actors On Actors

Grammy-nominated singer Andra Day had never starred in a movie before she channeled Billie Holiday in a new biopic directed by Lee Daniels. In “The United States Vs. Billie Holiday,” Day plays the iconic jazz singer as she’s being targeted by a government investigation in the final years of her life. To fully inhabit the legend, Day prepared extensively for the role, as she told Leslie Odom Jr. in Variety’s Actors on Actors, presented by Amazon Studios. (Odom Jr. also portrays a musical trailblazer — Sam Cooke — in Regina King’s “One Night in Miami.”) “I basically abused my body for a long time,” Day says. “I’m joking and not really joking. I got the role at the very top of 2018. Reading everything I could get my hands on. Listening to every interview. Apparently, I exhausted the internet of Billie Holiday photos. Apparently, the internet will tell you that you’ve reached the end.”