You see Taraji P. Henson gracing the covers of magazines and recently winning a Golden Globe for her work as Cookie on the hit TV show Empire, but behind every success story are years and years of hard work.
Nothing is more demonstrative of Henson's journey than an audition tape that recently surfaced, showing her and Tyrese going toe-to-toe in scenes from the 2001 movie Baby Boy. It's the cult classic that introduced the world—or, at the very least, black America—to Henson.
In it, Henson is fed up with Tyrese's (who plays Jody) cheating ways, and is confronting him about the low-down dirty things he has going on with God knows who around town.
Henson is committed to every line and even attacks Tyrese at one point, after which they both break from character and start laughing. Check them out in a few audition scenes that have to be about 15 years old:
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Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele is a staff writer at The Root and the founder and executive producer of Lectures to Beats, a Web series that features video interviews with scarily insightful people. Follow Lectures to Beats on Facebook and Twitter.
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