Keyshia Cole’s long-awaited biopic has finally been released and the singer has now shared some “could’ve been” details about the project.
Keyshia Cole: This Is My Story premiered on Thursday (June 21), and the screening was followed by a personal message from the star herself. Among the many subjects she addressed, the prospect of working with late director and producer John Singleton was one that caught everyone’s attention.
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“John Singleton, we sat down with him and was supposed to do the movie,” she said. “That didn’t happen then.” Cole then jokingly explained that they chose not to have him on the project because she wanted to play herself in her acting debut whereas he wanted to go in another direction.
“Rest in peace John Singleton,” the Oakland native concluded.
The Lifetime film, which was released on Sunday (June 25), details the multi-platinum artist’s ascension from a rough childhood in the Bay Area to becoming a colossal public figure.
“Mommy this movie is for you,” she stated in her note after the premiere. “I’ve seen the film five times, so I’ve done a lot of crying and reflecting. For the most part, it’s a reflection of my life and my love I have for my mom. Hate that it ended the way that it did. But the truth is, this is my life.”
The “Let It Go” singer also talked about bringing the idea to fruition. “Lifetime was calling for a little while,” she said. “When I did the VERZUZ, they were reaching out about doing the movie. We didn’t do it at that time. Shortly after, my mom had passed.
“They reached back out like, ‘Yo, this is some things that’s happened.’ My dad passed after that, then my dog 14 years passed. Okay, my best friend too? Gotcha. We decided to capture that during that time, but we were trying to do the movies when I first got signed to Interscope.”
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One surprising detail Cole revealed was that she hated her biggest hit, “Love.”
“I hated it, because I didn’t think that I was really good at writing slow records,” she recalled. “But I took my little CD player and sat in the corner, all my friends were drinking. We were in Malibu, I had linked up with some rich chicks out here. They were doing their thing, I sat over there in the corner and I wrote the record. Everybody loved it, but I don’t know. I didn’t like it.”
