- This jacket is fly.
I mean, this never goes out of style
Right?
Hi, I'm Rosario Dawson.
And today I am with Glamour breaking down
some of my most iconic looks from different characters
I've played over the years.
[music]
- Mandalorian 2019.
- [The Mandalorian] Ahsoka Tano. Bo-Katan sent me.
We need to talk.
- [Rosario] We were talking a lot about, you know
where Ahsoka is in her journey.
And there was so much of a play of wanting the Sage warrior.
So she's sort of in the Gandalf the gray period
before she goes into Gandalf the white period.
Wanting all of these materials to feel very old
and very much worn that has to have a certain kind
of quality to it, to make it feel
like something that could be made in the future and space.
You actually get into the, the weaving
of this beautiful cloak that she wears that is
large enough to cover her, her montrals
there's all these colors in it.
You know, as much as it might just seem kind of gray
there was so much texture and color and beauty
and it was just so nice.
The materials felt so good.
And one of the things that I really liked, you know
that we were able to build in were like the diamonds
in the arm pieces that were really beautifully kind of built
in so that you could see that surface
the color, the orange of her skin
and be able to see her back.
So we kind of cut it in a way
that we could see more of her skin
because that was just something that you used to see a lot
with Ahsoka when she was younger
she would show her bare midriff
or she'd have arms bare or pieces that were kind of cut out.
And it was a nice kind of nod to some
of her earlier fashion choices, even though she's matured
into this Sage wise warrior.
It's this forehead piece
they, they do this whole thing of covering up my eyebrows
and then they get this whole forehead piece on.
So she could have this perfect
alien forehead that doesn't move, which also
makes it a little bit challenging expression wise.
I have a little, uh, Brian Sipe who did the makeup
He actually gave me one of my forehead's.
It was a very strange thing.
We were filming and he kept taking my forehead pieces off
putting them in a drawer.
And I was so curious as
to what he was going to do with them
but he ended up eventually actually giving them
out as a gift to everyone.
So, this is Kids 1995.
My very first role, I played Ruby.
Best friend to the protagonist,
she's an out there young girl
who is very promiscuous
and takes her friend Jenny with her to get tested for HIV.
And then the story pivots
from there and is a very important tale
In to what happens when you're not paying attention
to your kids.
- No, man, it hits that, hits that little thing
in the tonsils or esophagus or whatever the hell it is.
- [Rosario] I loved the fact that we
just leaned into what these kids'
lives would actually be.
And that's a lot of thrift shopping, hand me down kind
of things.
So that was what I remember sourcing with Kim
on this project.
I played this character that only had four days of filming
on the actual project.
We did a really rigorous rehearsal period,
which was very necessary considering
none of us were actors beforehand.
And it didn't feel weird because the writer was 19
when he wrote this
and the director had never directed something
either before.
So we're kind of all of it together and figuring it out
but it was so fun.
It was very shocking when it came out and made the ripples
that it did.
You know, here I was discovered on my stoop to audition
for something I'm like, and if they're picking people
off the street, then this is probably going nowhere
[laughing]
Little did I know.
We shot this in 2001, I was 21 years old.
The world was a very different place.
It's incredible that we shot this pre social media and all
of the things that we have now,
we really created a family together.
I love those girls like my sisters.
And I'm so glad that the film has found its audience
and so who love it all these years later.
20 years later, squat.
♪ Everything in my life would be all right ♪
[vocalizing]
Fashion is a really very important aspect to this film.
And I don't think it got enough credit going into it
but we loved it.
I mean, you think about this
as their early two thousands Destiny's Child
with the girl bands who were all dressed
in kind of their own outfits that are made to themselves.
That kind of have them match
and show off their different personalities.
It's been really fun to see fans love rocking
those, those ears and tails as much as we did.
♪ I had it when I walked in the door ♪
- Friends, I still have quite a lot from,
I have jackets.
I've got boots.
I've got, I think that was back when I still had some flex
in my writer to be like, I want my own costumes.
I don't know where that disappeared.
But somewhere along after Rent, I think they
realized that might be too expensive for them to give
up such important stuff.
But I'm so glad,
you know, because I really, I loved Mimi.
There are things that I bought, like leopard print bras
and things that I wanted to wear, that I still
have today just because it was just hard for me to get rid
of thinking about, you know, how I was trying to
make every single expression iteration of this character
be alive.
I still, I have that bra still.
I have so much from this film and that makes me really happy
because it's also wearable now like
this jacket is fly.
I mean, this never goes out of style.
You know.
Right.
I'm glad I was just at that age where I had the audacity to
imagine that I could, I could be in this film.
And luckily,
luckily it paid off.
♪ We're not gonna pay ♪
♪ Last years rent ♪
It was very bold of me to audition
to be in the film version of a play that six out
of the eight original cast members were going to be in
and I'm not trained like Tracy Thompson was
the only other newbie who was kind of brought into the fold.
She went to Julliard.
So she's just fully trained in this.
And I just sing in the shower and love karaoke.
But growing up in that world and having been raised
in an abandoned building in the lower east side
in a very rich chosen family, artistic community
like its represented in this, where you don't value people
because of how much they make.
But because of who they are was just so important to me
Sin City was 2005.
We had shot this in 2004.
So I cut my hair off to play this character
And Mon who's my very good friend who did my hair,
bleached it afterwards.
And when you see us do all our press
I've got this crazy bleached hair
that half the time I really didn't style well,
So I look kind of like my grandmother.
It's so funny like literally we went to Comic Con,
I think it was the first Comic Con that I went to.
And it was like, Jaime King
and Jessica Alba and they both, both bleached their hair.
So we all showed up like, oh shit
we're all bleached blondes
Except that they looked cool
And I looked like my grandmother.
It was hilarious.
I dunno, I was channeling Golden Girls.
I love Golden Girls.
- What style you want?
I got a collection.
- [Rosario] Because I was filming in scenes with actors
who weren't there, who filmed weeks earlier.
And she had the technology to show us where we were
in green screen.
This was way ahead of its time.
I was like, I want the earrings, exact, I want the straps.
I want everything. Exactly.
I don't care.
I'm, I'm going all out.
There's only, you only live once.
And I'll be able to look back on this
as I am now and be like, that's,
that was pretty, I was looking pretty good in my twenties.
Not too bad.
I have to say there was one thing we figured out
the entire time we were filming the way
that we had done the straps on the boot that I was wearing
It was like this top kind of leather that wouldn't allow me.
Cause it went over my knee.
I couldn't really bend it past a certain point.
So I basically had to stand on set.
They had this like leaning thing for me
so that I could stand because I couldn't bend my legs
up until literally, maybe the last two days
of shooting when she was like, maybe I'll put elastic on it.
And then I suddenly was like
it doesn't look like any different from it being leather.
And I have mobility.
I got to audition for Lala Bonilla in my senior year
of high school in 1997, we filmed He Got Game
that summer, comes out a year later 1998.
Everyone was like, oh my God,
you worked with Denzel Washington
- I'm Jake Shuttlesworth, I'm Jesus father.
- Yeah, how are you?
- [Rosario] This was a really special character for me.
This was the round the way girl that I grew up with
you know, with the nameplate necklace and the bamboo
earrings and you know, the attitude and, and
like all that energy, that vibration was just so critical
especially cause I'm from Coney Island.
Was born in Coney Island.
My mom was a teenage mom, went to Lincoln high school
which the characters in this go to Lincoln high school.
I actually still have a Lincoln high school sweatsuit
that I got from this, I loved it.
I loved the play on the jewelry.
I loved her hair and loved the makeup, the yellow nails
were very big thing.
I have to say
Spike gives me some of my best iconic names.
You know, I got to be Lala Bonilla to this day
He still calls me Lala.
He goes, what's up, Lala.
I still get called Lala when I walk down the street.
Yo, one of my favorite memories
about that movie was going to the premiere.
I remember going to the bathroom afterwards
and this woman, I kind of confronted me in the back
went I can't believe you did Jesus like that.
That's so messed up.
Like who does that?
And I, I started getting nervous cause it
it got kind of like heated, you know, they started
like listing off of, they had just come out of the movies
and we're feeling super animated and, and I'm like
I just need to go to the bathroom.
And then there were, you know, they said, you know
but I felt you at the end.
And that was so critical to me because you know
I'm playing this teenage girl who makes some really
poor choices.
And I grew up around that girl
and she's constantly demonized and looked down upon.
And I hate that, you know
because I recognize the humanity of everybody.
And I really tried to do that with this character.
And so it felt really good
at the end of that exchange where the women said, you know
I felt you at the end.
This is David Oyelowo's directorial debut.
And you know, when he got the script, he, you know
told Emily how much he loved it
and how much it resonated with him
with how much he wanted to see a story like this told
through the lens of someone who looks more like him.
And she was totally open to that.
And when they changed that and decided to go
with a family of color at the center of this
and we got to hear Afrocentric music in there and clothing
and all the kinds of stuff that I think was just
really important for representation in a story
that we don't normally get to see people who look
like me in these great, big fantastical, magical realism
adventure stories that I grew up loving.
Like I love that he leaned into it so much
and doing his research that he was like, well
you have a fashion line based in Ghana.
And it'd be really amazing to have some
of your pieces in this.
So there are several pieces
from Studio 189 that are in the film
which I thought was really cool that Nadine worked in
with all of the other pieces that she was sourcing for this.
So it was, it was really nice.
And I remember being a little scared
cause I had bought this huge suitcase
of Studio 189 with me.
And a lot of the stuff were samples
we're tiny little company, you know?
And then it was like your, your gonna send all that back.
I remember one of the things we had, we had a
like a really at the, at the ends of the film
I wanted to throw a lot of our indigo in it.
So I have this beautiful indigo wrap that she's
holding herself and you know, in her state of her illness
that it's really challenging for her to be up right
to be moving around, to be outside in the cold.
And she's mustering all the strength that she has left
in her frail body to be pushing out her love into the world
hoping that her son will come home safely.
I also wear these really big indigo pants
that were put in there and she's walking around
and you might not necessarily know there's just
like little touches and hints
and things that we threw in the background, or you know
that you could see a part of her wardrobe.
It was just really nice to kind of recognize all the
all the mothers out there
from all around the world, in this project.
Thank you so much
for going down memory lane with me.
Glamour, thank you for this opportunity.
It's been such a journey um stepping
into so many different characters shoes, and I'm glad
that you got to do that a little bit with me today.