Trivia / Beyond the Lights

• Actor-Inspired Element:
  • Noni was originally intended to be American and Gugu Mbatha-Raw auditioned with an American accent. However, when Gina Prince-Bythewood heard her speak in her natural English accent, she liked it so much that she switched Noni's nationality. Basically, Noni (and, by extension, Macy) is a Brit because Gugu Mbatha-Raw opened her mouth.
  • To help herself get into character, Gugu wrote a song as Noni. She gave the finished lyrics to Gina Prince-Bythewood- who liked them so much she included them in the film (they're the lyrics that Noni reads to Kaz when she shows him her box of lyrics).
• Actor-Shared Background: Like her character Noni, Gugu Mbatha Raw was raised by a single mother (her parents divorced when she was a year old) and has a black father and white mother. Unlike her alter ego, however, Mbatha-Raw enjoys close, healthy relationships with both of her parents (per her interviews, her father has always played a very active role in her life and her parents remain on such friendly terms with one another that the three of them often will do things together as a family), whereas Noni's father is totally absent.
• Defictionalization: Gugu has released some tracks as Noni. In addition, you know that clip from Noni's and Kid Culprit's Masterpiece music video that's shown at the Billboard Awards at the beginning of the movie? You can see the entire thing for yourself here.
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • The physical transformation into a hyper-sexualized pop-star was not an easy one for Gugu Mbatha Raw. Learning all of Noni's complicated (and suggestive!) dance moves required SIX MONTHS of intense, six-day-a-week physical training (ironically, Mbatha-Raw actually comes from a dance background-but her specialty is ballet, a far cry from the sort of stuff seen in Hip-Hop/R&B!). Mbatha-Raw also had to get used to staring at herself in a mirror whilst touching and grabbing herself in extremely provocative ways (she found it so unnerving initially that she pleaded for the mirrors to be taken down).
  • Noni's risque wardrobe (per Mbatha-Raw, the singer sports a whopping 30 outfits throughout the film!) presented another challenge for the actress. In addition to pushing her out of her "comfort zone", many of the ensembles were extremely uncomfortable. One notable example is the chain get-up Noni wears to the BET Awards. The bodice weighed twelve pounds while the matching bracelet tipped the scales at five pounds-meaning Mbatha-Raw was carrying around a grand total of seventeen pounds of chains.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • A somewhat unusual example, as it actually took place before filming began. Gina Prince-Bythewood came up with a very creative method for helping Gugu Mbatha Raw and Nate Parker get into character; she sent them on an in-character lunch date-and then secretly hired faux paparazzi to follow them there! Things got so crazy that the staff (who were just as much in the dark about the "paparazzi" as Mbatha-Raw and Parker) actually called the cops and allowed the startled actors to hide in the kitchen (between the fridge and the grill, per Parker) until Parker got hold of their driver. The experience left Parker with a healthy respect for "what it's like to date a pop-star" and gave Mbatha-Raw a new appreciation for her "relative anonymity".
  • The blood that we see on Noni's hand after she breaks down and smashes glass-covered posters of herself isn't entirely of the fake variety. Gugu got so into it that she ended up accidentally cutting herself for real.
• No Stunt Double: Word of God says that the person we see dangling from the balcony in the scene where Noni tries to jump is, in fact, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and not a stunt double.
• Troubled Production: It wasn't the production itself that was the problem-it was GETTING to that point. It ultimately took Gina Prince-Bythewood 7 years to get this movie made (granted, some of that was just fine-tuning the script). During that time she faced studio opposition on everything from her casting of Gugu Mbatha-Raw (a virtual unknown to American audiences at that point) to her decision to make both the female and male leads black (in the minds of the studios, this made it a "black film" and they weren't exactly eager to take a chance on that). Fortunately, she refused to quit fighting to make her vision a reality.
• Working Title: If you remember hearing Gugu Mbatha-Raw refer to the film as "Blackbird" in a few interviews prior to its release, you aren't going crazy-that was indeed the intended title. However, it turned out that there was ANOTHER movie with that title coming out earlier that year, so it had to be changed to avoid confusion.
• Write What You Know: Noni being born to an unwed seventeen-year-old who was abandoned by her baby's father and forced to raise the baby on her own because her parents didn't want a black grandchild comes from Gina Prince-Bythewood's own beginning. The only difference is that Prince-Bythewood's birth mother opted to give her up for adoption. Macy's and Noni's relationship once the latter is an adult is in turn based on Prince-Bythewood's relationship with her birth mother after the two briefly reconnected-as well as what she feels it would have been like had her birth mother kept her instead of putting her up for adoption.