Moving "The Honeymooners" Into an Urban Framework: "...They had been talking about a remake of 'The Honeymooners' for years, and when I thought about every actor - black, white, Asian, Latino - who could possibly play Ralph Kramden, only Cedric really made sense. Somebody who could open a film who has the chops, who has the comedic presence, who’s got that larger-than-life sort of persona, he was the only one that fit to me. So I didn’t enter into it with any skepticism.
And I also know that Cedric, he believed in the integrity of the original and didn’t want to lose the charm and the integrity of the original. I knew he wasn’t going to allow it to be made into some hip-hop buffoonery b.s., basically. So I put my trust in my friend and luckily it didn’t turn into a spectacle. Hopefully we were able to maintain the charm and integrity of the original while at the same time finding our own voice as these different characters and putting our own spin on it."
Gabrielle Union on How Her Alice Differs from Audrey Meadows’ Version: "Well, she’s black (laughs), so I brought a little more melanin - that was the main thing. But when I was watching all of the old tapes, because of the imbalance in their financial situation, the fact that she was a stay at home wife and he sort of browbeat her quite a bit. Now, the way relationships are now, no one would really buy that and would say ‘Why doesn’t she stab him and leave?’ So we had to really show at the very beginning of the film why they were in love, why she believed in him, why she is going to stay even though he sometimes flies off the handle and can be a little reactionary.
As we noticed in the originals, they were able to establish that sort of rapport over weeks. You’re like, 'Oh, this is maybe why she wanted to stay.' But in the film you’ve got to get it right in the beginning, to see why Alice would stay and offer a little bit more balance. We gave her and Trixie jobs, so she has this whole life outside of Ralph. And you see all throughout the film she’s trying to catch a cab because she’s always going to school. She’s college-educated. She has her own hopes and dreams and aspirations but you see that she saw something in Ralph. Hopefully you can kind of see those slight differences between my Alice and [her] Alice.'
Comparing This Role to Other Roles Gabrielle Union's Played in Her Career: "This character has a quiet restraint. The initial few takes of when Alice finds out that Ralph has taken the money, I had gone a little Lorena Bobbitt. And they said, ‘You know this is still PG. You can’t be that knee-jerk, reactionary kind of wife.’
The whole thing about Alice is she has this quiet resolve and then it reminded me of something my mom said when I got married. 'You can’t nit-pick over every little thing. You’ve got to sacrifice a couple of battles to win the war,' and that’s sort of Alice’s mantra. She’s not going to fly off the handle about every little thing. She’s going to sort of internalize things, sort of rationalize it in her own head, and then when the time comes when she needs to act, she acts. Whereas some of the other characters I’ve played are extrovertedly strong and ambitious and go-getters and leaders. And Alice is a leader, but she’s a quiet leader. I think she’s one of those people you follow into battle because you trust her, not so much because she’s got the biggest voice, or she’s all about the hype or the showmanship. She’s one of those people you could follow by her actions as opposed to what’s flying out of her mouth."
Page 2: Gabrielle Union on Working with Cedric the Entertainer and Comedy vs. Drama
