Andra Day Looks Beyond Billie Holiday in InStyle June 2021, Lensed by Chrisean Rose

The uber talented Andra Day, born Cassandra Monique Batie, admits that she had Billie Holiday on her brain when choosing her stage name. It never occurred to the singer, songwriter and Oscar-nominated actor that she would literally walk in the history and persona of the great American jazz and swing singer.

With a Golden Globe award added to her resume for her current movie ‘The United States vs. Billie Holiday’, Andra Day said “Zoom be damned”, as she sat down with Rebecca Carroll for the June 2021 issue of Instyle Magazine. Julia von Boehm styles Day in Dior, Gucci, La DoubleJ, Salvatore Ferragamo, Stella Jean, Versace and more for ‘Andra Day Enters a New Season’, lensed by Chrisean Rose [IG]. /Hair by Tony Medina. Makeup by Porsche Cooper

It’s not Rebecca Carroll’s first chat with Andra Day. She previously interviewed the star as part of press for the movie, an original Audible podcast ‘Billie Was a Black Woman’.

No gig was too small for the San Diego native’s march to success in her chosen life path. "I never had a Plan B," she tells Carroll. "Tunnel vision, always.” In 2010, fashion designer Kai Millard Morris was in the audience outside of a strip mall in Los Angeles where Day was performing. The Morris name may not resonate, but her former husband Stevie Wonder surely does.

Wonder connected Day to producer Adrian Gurvitz who helped her music career blossom. Among her Grammy nominations is the song ‘Rise Up’, the anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2017.

Now, Day has surpassed those dreams and finds herself challenged to let go of being Billie. Openly speaking of these days as an “exorcism” or “a divorce”, Day described the psychological and emotional experience of going to a different place, one where she returns to being Andra Day.

It’s a rare expression of deeply personal authenticity in a magazine interview: "It's a little scary," Day admits. "Because you're on a precipice a little bit, and you're going, 'OK, who am I? And who am I supposed to be? How am I supposed to be in this season?' "

The non-Hollywood narrative continues, as Andra Day adds another dimension to the current hot topic question about her wonderful life. "Listen, it's so fun," she says, delighted by the fairy-tale aspect of all that has happened to her around the movie. "And it's even more fun now — there's this element of, like, sensuousness. To me, that describes Billie better."

Ah yes. Another woman speaks openly about one of our most relevant topics at AOC — sensuality. Day, who lost 40 pounds for the role, reveals her determination to live in Billie Holiday’s mind as a musician and performer. Day wanted to stay away from the objectification and hypersexualization of Billie Holiday in the male-dominated world of jazz music during the 1930s, '40s, and '50s.

Her reasons are deeply personal, not only political or as a social activist. "I didn't want any element of sexualization. I had come out of something in my own life — dealing with porn addiction, sex addiction," she says, like we're just a couple girlfriends chatting about everyday weaves and woes. "I'm being very, very candid with you because I'm not the only one. But I knew I wanted all of that very much gone."

Andra Day on Her Weight Loss

Day also ventures into the discussion around her 40 pound weight loss to play Billie Holiday.

"I've had people ask me, 'Do you feel prettier now that you've lost weight?' I was like, 'Hell, no! I liked being juicy! I was cool,' " she says, laughing. "But I do like the way [the weight loss] feels on my body, I like the way it feels on my joints. You do notice a difference. Besides, to me, there is no such thing as a classic beauty. Beauty takes on so many different forms, in different times and depending on the nation. It's just about being confident, loving yourself, and understanding your value."

There’s much more soul food in the Andra Day interview. Read on at InStyle Magazine.