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It’s been a bit of a rough week for actress Naturi Naughton. In addition to enduring the bullying at the hands of 50 Cent, her boss, Lil Kim recently appeared on “Hollywood Unlocked” to call her disrespectful.
As you might assume, it had everything to do with Naturi’s portrayal of Kim in the 2009 film Notorious.
“I’m going to touch on this briefly because I think everybody already knows my answer to this. But I hated everything about that movie. I hated it. Wasn’t involved in it. I actually had to get my lawyers involved, which I ended up getting a check from it. It was greenlit, shot without my permission. Everybody knows this already. We talked about it.
How do you even pick somebody—because I’m sorry. That wasn’t…I was not okay with that. Don’t disrespect. I would have never picked her. Never, ever, ever. She has nothing in common with me. Nothing. We have nothing in common. And I don’t like the way she’s been disrespectful about it. Because I wasn’t even basically blaming her. But she did a whole documentary coming at me. I was like what is this.
I’m like, ‘Okay boo. You don’t want this smoke.’ Cuz at the end of the day, I really could really go there. But I been letting her…Because her thing is, she wanted me to just be okay with it. But if I’m not okay with you playing me in the role, either you’re going to do it. Because I can’t tell you not to take a role and get your money. But don’t say ‘Oh I love her.’ This, that and the third when you’re like, I don’t care what she think. I’m going to still do this movie. So basically, you’re doing it without my stamp of approval. So you’re doing it for a check. Or you’re doing it to come up. That’s fine. But don’t make it seem like I’m hating on you because I don’t want you to do it.. All of that talk she did on the documentary, I felt it was very disrespectful.”
If you’re wondering what Naturi said that was so disrespectful, here’s what she said during her interview with TV One’s “Uncensored.”
“I would never take on a role of real person that is alive and well and not try to speak with them and reach out. Let’s clear the record. At the time, there was a manger who was managing Kim. I called, I left multiple voicemail. The director of the film we’re going to put you guys together so you can ask questions. I’ll never forget. I was at the production office in Brooklyn, Kim comes off the elevator, I happen to be there for rehearsal. Huge, beautiful fur. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, the queen is here.’ She walks right by me with her crew. She goes into the director’s office. They close the door. All I hear is, ‘What the f*ck?!’ They’re arguing. They’re yelling and I’m like, ‘I hope this is not about me.’ But it was. I guess there was some miscommunication about the casting process. But again, I’m just an actress. I was just hired to do a part. So I was hoping and praying. I reached out via phone. I was there, that time in person. Maybe my look had something to do with it. Again, it started to replay the memories of 3LW saying I’m not good enough or because I guess she thought I was darker than the character should have been. I just wanted to have her blessing. I really did. To this day, I have nothing but love and respect for Lil Kim. she really is what spawned the careers of Nicki Minajs and Cardi B. They just took from that book and did it now. No disrespect to any of these artists. But please give her her just due. So for me, I have nothing but love and respect. And I hope that she knows I was honored to play her. And I hope one day she can see that and really know that.”
To be honest, Kim’s comments turn my stomach. For a Black woman to say that another Black woman has nothing in common with her is insulting and inaccurate. What’s most telling about this clip is the fact that in the midst of Kim’s visible anger, she never says why she didn’t want Naturi to play her and would have never picked her. But I think the implication is clear, she didn’t want to be portrayed by a darker skinned woman—even if she was a secondary character in a story that wasn’t her own.
We can see that there’s been plastic surgery and some alteration to her skin tone. Kim’s own words have reflected her intention in the modifications she’s made over the years. In 2016, she said, “I’m a Spanish girl trapped in a Black girl’s body.”
Most telling though was what she told Newsweek in 2000: “Guys always cheated on me with women who were European-looking. You know, the long-haired type. Really beautiful women [who] left me thinking, ‘How I can I compete with that?’ Being a regular black girl wasn’t good enough.”
And we know she’s not lying. We saw it play out with the love triangle between herself, Biggie and Faith Evans. It’s a thing.
But it’s troubling that in her quest for male attention, Kim lost some ability to connect and see herself in other Black women and essentially herself.
The reviews for Notorious are either hit or miss. But what I hear people consistently say is that Naturi bodied that role. She did her justice. I wonder if Kim has seen it or was she so thrown off by Naturi’s skin tone that she avoided it altogether, choosing not to see herself in that shade—a shade, truth be told, is closer to the Lil Kim we first met than the woman we see today.
But we can’t force people to walk into a realization they’re not ready to confront honestly. A conversation about anti-Blackness, Eurocentric beauty standards and self love likely wouldn’t go over too well. But hopefully Lil Kim should understand that since she is still alive and well, she should work to tell her own story, so she can determine how she’s portrayed. Furthermore, given that this film was released over ten whole years ago, it’s time that she let this go.
Naturi has heard Kim’s thoughts and she responded perfectly.
