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

Playing Mrs. Robinson

Unlike Regina King, Kerry got to spend a bit of time with Della Robinson, Ray Charles’ wife. She met with her at her home and interviewed her about all sorts of things, which was a rare occurrence for her. When her husband was in the limelight, Della Robinson never did press and just hung in the cut, happy to be devoted to taking care of her children and the home she and Ray shared together. In another interview with BlackFilm.com, Kerry spoke about what it was like to meet Mrs. Robinson and why she couldn’t have her around her while she was filming.

 It’s a good question. It’s sort of two-sided. In some ways it was incredibly helpful to meet the real Della cause when I play a character, I make a little list such as if my character were an animal, what animal would I be or what’s my character’s favorite book or what’s my character’s favorite food. In this case I got to actually go to the source and ask her, which was delightfully silly of course for her to think, if I were an animal what would I be. But I got to actually have real concrete answers from someone rather than to come up with that. The problem was that I really fell in love with Ms. Robinson. She’s just a phenomenal woman and so I got nervous that my respect for her would get n the way of me creating a character that had real vulnerability and humanity that I would be drawn to play her as a hero which is often the problem with bio pics which is why this one is so good cause it doesn’t do that. What I did was that on the very first day of shooting, I spoke with her that morning. The humming bird scene was our very first day of shooting, and I spoke to her that morning when we were at the restaurant, and then I said, “I’ll talk to you in a few months” cause I knew I couldn’t talk to her while we were shooting. It would have held me back. So I let her sort of build the base and I just played on it.