Naomi Ackie speculated on the possibility that the late singer Whitney Houston, who she’s playing in I Wanna Dance With Somebody, may have been pansexual in a new interview with The Sunday Times, published on Sunday, December 18. The Times’ Laura Pullman explained that the actress, 30, wondered if Whitney, who died at 48 in 2012, was pansexual while reflecting on her role in the upcoming biopic.
Naomi spoke about how the film portrays romance that was rumored to have taken place between Whitney and her assistant Robyn Crawford. The actress explained how she related to the “I Will Always Love You” singer. “There’s something about her that was very free in that and quite modern, given the time she was in,” Naomi told the outlet. “That’s something I feel. I don’t know who I’ll end up with.”
Naomi continued to explain that playing Whitney during the rumored relationship was one of the aspects that she felt she had a better handle on. “I think that [part of Houston’s life] was actually probably easier for me to understand than some of the other things that she was going through because, you know, love is love,” she said.
Robyn claimed that she and Whitney had a relationship in her 2019 memoir A Song For You: My Life With Whitney Houston. She said that they “never talked about labels,” but spoke about how much she loved the singer. “Whitney knows I loved her and I know she loved me. We really meant everything to each other. We vowed to stand by each other,” she wrote in the book.
The author said that Whitney called off their relationship, but they stayed close friends. “She said, ‘I don’t believe that we should be physical any longer’, that ‘It would make our journey much harder if they found out about it,'” Robyn said during an interview on Red Table Talk.
Besides the alleged relationship with Robyn, Whitney was married to Bobby Brown, 53, from 1992 until 2007. During their time together, they had a daughter Bobbie Kristina Brown, who died from lobar pneumonia in 2015 at 22.
I Wanna Dance With Somebody will premiere in movie theaters on December 23.