Naomie Ackie 'need a lot of therapy' after filming Whitney Houston biopic

Naomi Ackie fell into a "deep depression" and needed "a lot of therapy" after completing the 2022 Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody.

The Blink Twice actress admitted to GQ that she "buckled" under the weight of playing the I Have Nothing singer and struggled to enjoy the experience of filming her first leading role.

Returning home to London following the shoot, Ackie sought professional help after falling into a "deep depression".

"I sat at the end of my bed, and I just wept. While I was there it felt like I would never leave. Then I got home, and it felt like I had blinked," she recalled. "I needed a lot of therapy. A lot of medication to help me throughout. I was having a lot of panic attacks."

The British actress confessed that the experience made her wonder if she could handle the pressure of leading a movie.

"It's not that anyone was particularly horrible on that set. Things go wrong on sets all the time, so it wasn't about that. It was really about the pressure I put on myself to endure it," she shared.

"Whitney's emotional world wasn't hard to handle. None of the acting stuff was hard to do. It was everything around it that was just s**t. It was really hard to enjoy."

The 32-year-old explained that she prepared to play Houston for a year, dropped around 13 kilograms (28 pounds) for the role and spent seven months filming in Boston. During that time, she spent every waking moment studying the late singer and began to lose herself in the process.

Ackie learned her lesson from the experience and took that with her when she played the lead in Zoe Kravitz's 2024 film Blink Twice six months later.

"A big lesson I learned was that I have to own the responsibility of taking on a lead role," she stated. "I have to do the job to the best of my ability, but I cannot let it destroy my sense of self. And that one had to destroy my sense of self for me to learn that lesson."