Bet You Didn’t Know: Secrets Behind The Making Of “Ray”

Playing Margie

While the other characters had the luxury of studying the real life individuals they were going to portray, that wasn’t the case for Regina King. In a lot of ways she, the wardrobe team and the director had to invent the woman that was Margie. See how she was able to pull it off.

It’s a lot of pressure because there’s not a lot about her. So you’re kind of like in the dark. There’s not a lot of photographs on her, there’s not a lot of video clips. So it’s not like I really have someone to kind of study their movements. All I had was her music and her voice to study. And for her voice to be so powerful and the information that Ray had given Taylor and the little bit that I was able to read on her background and where she was from, I just kind of took all those things and just felt that she was just this raw talent that was strong in the sixties and spoke her mind. And that wasn’t really received well, women speaking their mind that way. So we just, with the wardrobe, tried to do little things like put her in pants, because women really didn’t wear pants. But we felt like Margie would be that one woman that was going to wear pants. Not only was she going to wear pants, she was going to wear pants everyday if she could.

In case you forgot, Regina nailed the role. Watch one of my favorite scenes from the movie in the clip below to see what I mean.

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