14 DAY TRIAL // Only a very short while ago, Lifetime announced a new made-for-TV biopic that would document the rise to fame and the occasionally troubled personal life of the late R&B singer and actress Aaliyah, featuring Disney Channel star Zendaya Coleman, better known as just Zendaya.
The network is now saying that she dropped out of the project.
“We are sad Zendaya will no longer portray Aaliyah. Production is currently on hold,” reads a tweet from Lifetime. It doesn’t say what happened to make the young actress and singer want to drop out but the consensus is that she and her people finally gave in to pressure from Aaliyah’s family.
Reaction to the casting news was instant and very negative, and it wasn’t just the late star’s family who said that Zendaya was simply not the right choice for the role. Fans too believed it, with many even saying that she was not “black enough.”
Asked about this, Zendaya’s father told the paparazzi that she would “blacken” herself for the role.
However, Aaliyah’s family was also opposed to the idea of Lifetime handling the biopic, just like it happened when plans were announced for a Whitney Houston film of this type: basically, both Aaliyah and Whitney are too big to receive what has come to be known as “the Lifetime treatment,” i.e. get a mediocre TV biopic.
Jomo Hankerson, Aaliyah’s cousin and president of her label Blackground Records, was the most vocal on the issue, arguing that a star like her deserved something better than a TV film.
“We want a major studio release along the lines of ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It,’ the Tina Turner movie. This needs A-list actors, A-list talent that can breathe life into what we think is a phenomenal story,” Hankerson said shortly after Lifetime announced plans for the film.
“It’s never been about the actress. The problem that we have is that Aaliyah was an icon and she deserves an iconic tribute, not a Lifetime movie,” he added.
The Lifetime film would have been based on the book “Aaliyah: Princess of R&B” by former Time Magazine music editor Christopher Farley, and would have seen Zendaya record 4 cover songs to be included in the film.
Lifetime says that production is now “on hold,” but there is a lot of speculation online that the biopic might never see the light of day after all. Perhaps fans will get a feature film like the one Hankerson is talking about but, so far, there are no concrete plans in that direction.