The incredible documentary is available to watch at home right now.
How do you mentally prepare yourself to interview a legend like Tina Turner?
Additionally, when it comes to the directors of the brilliant, powerful new documentary Tina, how do you mentally prepare yourself for some of the others taking part in the project, including Angela Bassett and Oprah Winfrey?
When we chatted to Oscar-winners Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin about their new movie, we covered A LOT of topics, from broaching some sensitive subjects, to finding new ground on someone as well-known as Tina, to the difficulty of the interviewing process when you may already have a preconceived notion of who and what your subject is.
But, of course, we wanted to know, is it intimidating to interview legends like this?
Martin tells us: “When you position it like that, yeah, it is daunting. I interview Oprah and Dan interviewed Tina Fucking Turner! I think, for us, once we settle in on this job that we have to do, all of that stuff kinda goes to the wayside.
“And there is always a moment when you slip up in an interview and you go, ‘Oh my God, that is Oprah in front of me!’ and you totally lose track and where you’re going, but we try to limit those as much as possible, because we’re usually more pre-occupied with the stress of making a decent movie!”
Lindsay then adds: “I think too, it is worth noting, that our interview with Oprah was fine, she was very lovely, but was kinda like ‘What are you guys getting at?’ It was illustrative of the fact that everyone had a conception of what this should be and we had a hard time getting people to understand our point of view. And it was only until the film came out [that they got it].
“I think Tina and her husband Erwin [Bach], we were very straight forward with them, for what we wanted to do and I think they kind of understood. But even Erwin said that it wasn’t until he watched it that he said ‘Oh, okay, I get what you’re doing’, and I think it was similar for Tina, too.
“Honestly, I think Oprah sat down and was like ‘Okay, you’ve got 15 minutes, let’s talk about why she’s great’, but we’re kinda asking Oprah to break down media and why does media ask certain questions, and she was like ‘What is this??’ But that does illustrate part of the challenge we had making the film.”
You can listen to our conversation with the directors in full right here:
Tina is available to watch on NOW and via Sky Cinema from today (Sunday, 28 March).
Check out the trailer right here:
Clip via Sky TV
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