Jordin Sparks visited ‘On Air with Ryan Seacrest’ recently, where the ‘American Idol’ champ talked about her new movie ‘Sparkle’, working with the legendary Whitney Houston, teaming with Jennifer Hudson on her next film, how her life has changed since ‘Idol’, seeing her bikini body on the magazine stands on the cover of Shape, how her boyfriend Jason Derulo reacted to the magazine, what made her lose 50 pounds, and how she and Jason encourage each other to eat right.
On the mood at the premiere:
It was crazy. It wasn’t necessarily somber because everybody was so excited to finally be here and for everybody to be seeing it. I was sitting there, it was actually my fifth time seeing it, still bawling like a little baby. I was sitting there and her family was sitting right behind me, so Bobbi Kristina was behind me, Pat Houston. I just got chills all over. I was sitting there thinking I’m not going to do it this time. You’ll be fine. She opens her mouth to sing, and you’re just completely overtaken by it, so I start tearing up, then I hear Bobbi behind me, she’s crying, then I just bawled because it’s got to be so hard for her to watch it. It’s amazing to see her up on that screen, but it’s sad too because she’s not here. But it was so fun. It’s the end of the chapter, but a new beginning at the same time. We feel like we’ve been talking about this movie since we all got casted.
On her fondest memory of working with Whitney:
Two of them stick out, well three of them stick out. One was a funny one where we were upstairs waiting for the camera to turn around, and I put on my iPod and ‘Teach Me How To Dougie’ came on, and we all got up and started dancing and Whitney walked up and we paused for a second, because we didn’t know what she was going to say, and she was like what is that? Oh it’s just this dance people are doing. She’s like, ‘Oh I want to do it too.’ She walked up and just started dancing. That’s how she was. She was so funny. Another one was, we were waiting for a camera to turn around again during a dinner scene, and I walked into a room where a piano was, and I was sitting there in a little world with my eyes closed, and I felt these two arms come around me and just started playing the most beautiful melody on the piano. I look over and Whitney is leaning over me. I’m looking around and wondering does anybody else see this right now? I can’t describe that moment in any way other than intimate. I just couldn’t imagine that she would do that. Another one was at the end of filming, I was doing the finale, she came to watch just to be supportive. She just wanted to be there to watch, and I was done, I was wearing my dress and everything, and she was like come here. She took my face in her hand and she held my face and looked me right in the eye and said, ‘You were everything we wanted and more. You were perfect.’ I never thought that I would have Whitney saying something like that to me, much less working with her. Even getting to talk to her for more than two seconds. To be able to have done that, she was executive producer, and she was my co-star, and she became my friend. It’s just so crazy how all of that happened.
