Jennifer Hudson Talks Industry Friends, Whitney Houston, Her Dreams

jennifer hudson 3Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Hudson is featured in the latest issue of Net-a-Porter’s EDIT magazine, looking gorgeous in a retro Hollywood glamour theme. Hudson, who is busy promoting her latest film “Black Nativity,” spoke on several issues in the magazine. Check out excerpts of her interview below:

On her industry friends:

“It is so bizarre to me to say, ‘OK, let me go email Alicia [Keys], let me go email Beyoncé, let me go talk to Oprah.’ . .  For so long I sat and admired them. Now I’m among them.”

On the Oscars:

“I didn’t know what the Oscars was. Where we come from, we don’t know anything about that world. If you see it on TV, it’s like, ‘Oh, people in fancy suits and ties.’ ”

On realizing her dreams:

“I used to babysit for my cousin and she came home and said, ‘You didn’t cook, you didn’t clean!’ I replied, ‘I don’t cook.’ She said, ‘What you gonna do when you get married?’ I said, ‘I am going to be rich and have maids and cooks.’ And I was dead serious.”

On former American Idol contestants disappearing from the public’s eye:

“What I feel about people you never hear from again is that they get too caught up in the hype. They think that just getting here is making it. No, it’s not making it. It’s like a losing-weight situation: it’s one thing to lose it, but it’s another to keep it off. Well, it’s one thing to make it, but it’s another thing to stay. [That is] why you have to constantly do stuff to keep people’s attention. It’s a hustle, it really is.”

On her interactions with Whitney Houston:

As a girl I’d sit in my momma’s house and sing I Will Always Love You. That’s why [singing in tribute] was so overwhelming. I’m just grateful I got to meet Whitney. She came backstage and was like, ‘I turn my torch over to you; you are The One’. I was like, ‘Oh my God! Did anybody else hear that?’ Had she not given me her blessing, I would never have stepped on that stage.”

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