NEW YORK -- To get a sense of Janelle Monáe's powers of transformation, look no further than her Instagram photos of past Halloweens. Monáe doesn't just throw something on. When she turns into the White Rabbit from"Alice in Wonderland" or Diva Plavalaguna from"The Fifth Element," Monáe looks legitimately ready to step onto a movie set.
"It is that character building that I love," Monáe said in a recent interview."I love just getting my body into discovering a new way to talk and to breathe, and, hopefully, being a reflection for other folks. Go outside of who you think you are every day." "It's been an incredibly transformative experience for me as an actor," Monáe says."I got an opportunity to show range. This character goes from comedy to the deep emotional, heavy-lifting dramatic scenes all the way to action, where I found myself working with a stunt coordinator at five, six in the morning in Greece after eating baklava."
Monáe is something of a futurist, herself. Earlier this year she published a collection of sci-fi stories titled"The Memory Librarian," adapted from elements in her 2018 album,"Dirty Computer." In it, Monáe depicts a future world where human desires are controlled by an organization called New Dawn and the identities of LGBTQ people can be wiped by a drug called Nevermind.