Mary J Blige is to appear as Nina Simone in a biopic of the jazz legend, and says she's working very hard to try and make sure she does justice to the role. Blige has been reading Simone's autobiography, 'I Put A Spell On You', and has hired a professional acting coach to help her get her performance right.
Blige says: "I'm going to take this role very seriously and try and bring Nina Simone back from the dead. If there's one job I'm going to give my all to - this is it. I'm not going to be doing it just because I've been asked to, I'm going to get into the grind of it, do my history and work real hard with my acting coach. Nina was a strong character and had to go through so much like I had to. She had problems with racism and I still suffer that today. I'm going to study to get everything just right as it's such a big thing."