Derek Luke's Double-Duty: How He Prepped for 2 Anticipated Summer Roles

Catch Luke alongside Steve Carell and Whitney Houston before the summer ends

Derek Luke is slated to have a stand-out summer. With today's release of Seeking a Friend for the End of the World and the anticipated Sparkle remake coming in August, the actor we first met in Antwone Fisher is proving himself, once again, to be a versatile actor who can work alongside the best of them.

In End of the World, he steals scenes with Steve Carell playing Speck, a man committed to surviving disaster, and in Sparkle, in which he got the chance to work with the late Whitney Houston, he plays Stix, a budding songwriter with a dream (a role he likened to his real father). Here, he speaks to Loop 21 about how he prepped for both roles.

Loop 21: What was it like working with fellow New Jerseyan (and legend) Whitney Houston?

Luke: It felt like a next door neighbor that you never got to meet until now. Everyday the theme was like being one of the only boys in the family and the sisters always taking long in the bathroom. That's what it was like with Whitney; the girls would come in their whole morning garb and everybody would say, "I gotta put on my face!" and as they started, they'd be singing. And Whitney always had this same routine; she'd come in playing gospel music and wouldn't come out her side of the trailer until her makeup was done, but when she came out the steam was coming off of her because she was so inspired by what she was listening to. 

What I love about Jersey - and a lot of us in the industry are from there, I think Tom Cruise is, too - is that when you see each other, you talk and just know what makes you different from everybody else, what distinguishes you. With Whitney, you sort of felt proud that you were sharing a fellow Jerseyan with the rest of the world.