Naomi Ackie on What Whitney Houston Would Think of New Biopic: 'She Might Have Loads of Notes'

Dave J Hogan/Getty Naomi Ackie

Naomi Ackie has a feeling Whitney Houston would have feedback about her new movie.

The London-born actress, 31, stars as the late icon in Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody, in theaters Thursday. Opposite her are Stanley Tucci as famed music executive Clive Davis (a producer on the film), Ashton Sanders as Houston's husband Bobby Brown, and Nafessa Williams as the singer's close friend Robyn Crawford.

In this week's issue of PEOPLE, Ackie says she hopes Houston would be a fan of the film — and that she'd, of course, be open to any notes from the icon.

"I would hope she would be like, 'OK, Nai, you did a thing!' " says Ackie with a laugh. "Also, she might have loads of notes and I'd just be like, 'Great — let's do another one. Direct me and we can do it again.' "

The actress, known for roles in 2019's Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and Netflix's The End of the F***ing World, says her priority with the project was to portray Houston as a human being and capture her struggles with fame and addiction in a respectful way. (Houston died in 2012 of a drug-related accidental drowning when she was 48.)

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"The thing about Whitney and people who are suffering from addiction is it's a reminder that it's an illness, that the person who is going through this is the victim of it," says Ackie. "Her life was extraordinary, but the things she was going through were things we all go through."

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Emily Aragones Naomi Ackie in Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody

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"Bringing her into a very human space and treating Whitney with the same compassion we would treat anyone else is really important," she continues, "because I think when it comes to the idea of celebrities and icons, sometimes we can be more unkind because our expectations of them are so high."

Director Kasi Lemmons agrees she also wanted to "capture her humanity" in the film, which was sanctioned by Houston's family and features the star's actual vocals for the big musical numbers.

"I think she'd be happy with it. I've thought about this a lot, of course," says Lemmons, who also directed 2019's Harriet. "I felt like we were having a conversation with Whitney. I asked her a lot, 'What would you think?' or 'Is this OK?' When we came to a crossroads or a sticking place, it was kind of like, 'Let's talk to Whitney about it.'

Lemmons adds, "I think she would be cool with it, and I think she would want the story told. She would want her humanness told, that she was not just a performer, but she was a mother and she was a daughter and she was a sister and she was a friend and she was a lover and a wife. All of those aspects that make her a full woman, we are including that in the story."

Both Ackie and Lemmons are confident in the end product of their hard work, and they don't plan on reading any takes or reactions online.

"I feel very comfortable with the movie," says Lemmons. "I really love it. I love the performance. I know why I did it and I know what I did, and I don't really need to read the comments."

Adds Ackie, "It's not my business what people think of me. I hope there's something everyone can take away [from the movie], but at the same time, I'm only human. I am not Whitney Houston. I am an actor and I tried to do something, so I'm choosing not to be hard on myself either, but also not trying to control whether people like it or not."

"That's the point of sharing a piece; people can have whatever opinion they want to have," she adds. "I'm trying to be reasonable and put myself in a reasonable space because I think — especially now — you can really find out what everyone wants to say about you. And that's just not healthy."

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody is in theaters everywhere Thursday.

PEOPLE's special edition all about the life an unrivaled career of Whitney Houston is available now.