André Benjamin on the Experience of Playing Hendrix in 'Jimi: All Is by My Side'

Somehow, some way, André Benjamin was going to play Jimi Hendrix onscreen. The Outkast singer and rapper — better known as André 3000 — had been attached to various aborted biopics about the late rock legend in the past. He finally got to embody the full Jimi Experience in the new drama Jimi: All Is by My Side from director John Ridley (the Oscar-winning writer of 12 Years a Slave), which is in theaters now and focuses on Hendrix’s pre-fame days in London.

Benjamin’s acting experience is limited — his last big-screen role was a minor one in the 2008 Will Ferrell comedy Semi-Pro. But he fully committed to the Jimi role, dropping 20 pounds from his already lean frame, learning to fake-play the guitar left-handed, and most impressively, working with a vocal coach to nail Hendrix’s laid-back, distinctive way of speaking. At a recent press day in Los Angeles, Benjamin spoke to Yahoo Movies about the challenges of filming, including the mixed blessing of not being able to secure the rights to Hendrix’s most famous songs.

When you were first offered Jimi, was that an easy “Yes” or something you had to mull over?
Definitely had to mull it over. Twice. And I finally ended up saying, “All right, let’s do it.” It was John [Ridley], the director, he just kept coming at it. He was like, “Man, I want you to do it, I want you to do it, I want you to do it.”

What was holding you back?
The physicality. And I’d been involved in a couple Hendrix projects early on in life and they were always kind of start-and-stop, we’d get this far and then not make it. And I didn’t know if I was ready to dedicate myself towards it…. But John was really adamant about doing this movie. So I kind of just rode off his excitement.

You guys couldn’t get any of Jimi’s songwriting rights for this movie. Was that a big roadblock?
Actually that’s the dopest thing about the project is we never needed the songs because the story that we’re telling was basically [about] the people, the support system, the women that helped make Hendrix get to the point of being the Hendrix that we know. So it was everything before that time. It was actually a really smart approach to the project, and it made us work harder as the characters too, because we couldn’t lean on all the normal Hendrix moves and performances. We couldn’t lean on the songs.

Hendrix is such an icon, obviously. What kind of fears did you have to confront when facing the challenge of portraying him?
I think he is the biggest music star in the world, just period, in any genre. I was just hoping, “Oh man, I hope I don’t f—- this man’s story up.” [Laughs]

You mentioned the physicality involved. What did that entail? You had to lose some weight, yes?
Yeah, I had to lose weight to get Jimi-skinny. I already had long hair, but they had to perm my hair because Jimi’s hair was permed — he used to wear rollers and that kind of stuff. So it wasn’t a wig. That, and speech training and left-hand guitar training.

I read that you almost quit because the left-handed guitar playing was so tough for you.
I just felt like, “This is Hendrix. If I look stupid playing a guitar, it can’t happen.” And John was just like, “Well we’ll just practice. The way I shoot it, it won’t really be focused on how great you look.” So I had to once again just lean on John and hope that he knew what he was talking about.

And now you’re ambidextrous on the guitar?
Not at all. [Laughs] It was just finger choreography. It was just knowing where to put my fingers for chords. Making sure I had the right chord shapes in my hands. We would have the track [playing], and I would sit there and just mimic what I should be doing.

So it sounds like the actual singing was the easy part.
Once I got his speaking voice, I just translated it to song. I watched a whole bunch of footage of him talking. And I worked with a vocal coach.

Does it get to the point where his voice is just constantly running through your head?
Yeah, it took me almost like a week after we stopped shooting to stop going back into some of his inflexions. Like some of the words he would use, like “dig.” Words from that time that were cool. You know how people say, “dude!” Thirty or forty years from now, when people make movies about now, they gonna have to research “dude.”

You recently told the New York Times that this role helped you get out of depression. How so?
Sometimes when you’re kind of sitting there, just mulling over the same thing over and over and over again, you need a distraction and this came at a great time. And it was because it was Hendrix. It wasn’t a distraction I could just bail out on when I wanted to. It was one of those things where, “Well this is Hendrix, and this is important, so you have to put your attention towards it.”

What did Hendrix mean to you as an artist?
You can tell from watching and listening to Hendrix’s music that he just fully put everything into the music. Even style-wise, lifestyle-wise, he lived the free life. Every artist would love to experience that at some time. He meant that for me. He’s just one of those artists that would let you know, “Really if you’re doing music, to fully do it you’ve gotta put your own self into it.”

Do you see a lot of parallels between your musical journey and his?
Yeah, and most artists. Sometimes you have to grow to be the star that people know you as. You have to start somewhere. And Hendrix was timid about his talent. About his vocal talent — he was always confident in his guitar playing. But he didn’t want to be the frontman of the band at first. He didn’t like his voice. So the people around, they helped nurture him to get up to that place by saying, “Hey, you can do this.”

I don’t think you or Outkast ever sampled Hendrix. Is he one of those artists that’s unsample-able?
No, I never sampled Hendrix, but you never know in the future. But he has had an influence on productions that I’ve done.

Anything specific you remember him inspiring?
Just like guitar solos and the use of guitar in certain music, like “Bombs Over Baghdad.” At the time I didn’t know of guitar solos in rap music. So it was a thing that I was really interested in, and I just wanted it in the song.

Jimi had a pretty laid-back attitude toward the makeup of his audience, which was mostly white, and is portrayed that way in the movie. As someone whose music has always crossed racial divides, do you relate?
Yeah, I definitely relate to it. When you look at the Outkast history, I remember at points where the audience starts to change in who’s showing up. And my whole thing was, it’s music, so you want everybody to be involved. It’s actually cooler when everybody can get into it. I definitely agree with Hendrix in the movie when he says he does it for everybody.

Will you allow them to make an Outkast biopic someday?
Of course. I would hope that they would do it in just the stupidest way they can do it. I was thinking of making an Outkast comedy biopic.

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