13 January 2009
Bloomfield's Anika Noni Rose went a long distance for her latest role, playing a co-starring role with Jill Scott in the HBO series The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, based on the books by Alexander McCall Smith.
"I had read several of the books before I was cast, and I read the script," Rose said in a session at press tour. "For me, when something resonates with me, I can hear the voice as I'm reading the script. So for me, she came to life immediately from these pages."
Rose, who won a Tony for her role in Caroline, or Change and is best-known as a member of the trio in Dreamgirls, was not familiar with the accent in Botswana, where the series was set and shot. So she improvised.
"I auditioned with a South African accent, because it was one that I knew and I wanted them to be able to hear that this was something that could fit on my tongue," Rose said.
She got the role as Mma Makutsi, the strange secretary to Scott's character Precious Ramotswe in the series co-produced by the late Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack, and learned the accent in part by immersion.
"We went there, and we had a dialect coach," Rose said. "In that time period, I really got to be around the people of the area and take those rhythms into my person and become a part of that earth, which is, I think, extraordinarily lucky and very necessary in that situation.
"Because Botswana is not an accent that is something that we're used to hearing. And the differences between Botswana and South Africa, though slight, are magnified particularly if you're trying to unlearn something to take something else in."
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency starts March 29 on HBO.
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