Oprah Winfrey opened up about working with director Lee Daniels on Lee Daniels’ The Butler, saying her she took a lot of direction from him about her over-the-top character Gloria.
Gloria, the wife of Cecil Gaines (who is really Eugene Allens, the real-life White House butler whose career spanned from 1952 to 1986) becomes an alcoholic throughout the duration of the film.
"If it were up to him, I'd have had three love scenes and been naked on the couch, smoking marijuana!" she told V Magazine. "But I talked him out of it."
Although she has her own television network, magazine and more, Winfrey said Daniels gave her no special privileges on set. “Lee doesn't care what your name is," she said. "The fact that he can make me – for a dance scene that now lasts less than 40 seconds – dance for six hours straight, and is going, 'Faster! Faster! More! More!' I think he gets a kick out of it."
People reports she continue about her drunk character, “My character progressively becomes an alcoholic and there was this scene where – good LORD today – Lee is saying, 'Drunker! Do the line, she's drunker!' And at one point I go, 'Lee, if she's any drunker she’s not sitting up anymore.' And he’s like, 'DRUNKER!' I'm like, 'Oh my God, what is happening here?'”
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