"Then she said, to herself: 'This is not for me.'"
Clive Davis said the new Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody, which he co-produced, "answers all the questions the audience wants to know" about the singer.
"Whether it's about her sexuality, or the way she reacted to any suggestion that she wasn't singing enough as a black person, or the effect of drugs, or recording with me," she told the New York Post.
Whitney Houston, who was married from 1992 to 2007 to New Edition's Bobby Brown, was constantly dogged by rumors that she had an affair with her friend Robyn Crawford.
In 2019, Robyn Crawford confirmed in her book, "A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston" that they were in a relationship after meeting as teenagers in the summer of 1980, when they were both group leaders at a summer camp.
"The film clearly shows that he was in a relationship with Robyn when she was a teenager for a year and then she, on her own, said, 'This is not for me,'" Clive Davis explained.
"And he said: 'I want a house. I want a marriage. I want children. I don't want a life and death struggle with my parents. It is against my religion. I want you to be my best friend." And those were the terms. She lists the men she was involved with long before Bobby,” she continued.
“It was very clear that she liked men and that she was straight. In her adult life, this was not an issue in her marriage. She was not sexually frustrated with Bobby. She was drawn madly, perhaps too much, into a mutually self-destructive relationship, but she was not disillusioned,” Clive Davis said.
Clive Davis - Whitney Houston
Kasi Lemmons, the director of "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," said she "fought" for the film's producers to highlight Whitney Houston's relationship with Robyn Crawford.
During an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Kasi Lemmons elaborated on her decision to reveal aspects of Houston and Crawford's long-rumored romance.
Whitney Houston's family agreed to include the complicated love story in the film before Lemmons joined the project in 2021, however, they expressed concern when the director informed them about Houston and Crawford's kiss scene.
“They have certain feelings and those feelings should be respected. To their credit, they said, “Okay, this was part of Whitney's life. This can become part of the film,'" said the award-winning director.
"I said, 'Well, they probably kissed. We can really assume there was a romance there. I think we all know that at some point they got over the friendship,'” Kasi Lemmons continued.
Actresses Naomi Ackie and Nafessa Williams, who play Whitney Houston and Robyn Crawford respectively in the film, said they were careful about portraying the two women's relationship on screen.
“Someone asked me about the signs and I don't feel comfortable answering that question for either of them because they didn't put signs. I think they were soul mates," Nafessa Williams told L.A. Times.
Noami Ackie added: “I think it's quite interesting that sometimes we have a need to put labels on everything, even when the people who are in a relationship don't themselves. That was always the energy, like there are no words for the love we have for each other. And that was my pleasure to portray."
