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Aaliyah Haughton

Aaliyah Haughton67 posts

Aaliyah Dana Haughton, a singer and actress, was born in 1979 in Brooklyn, New York. Raised in Detroit, Michigan, she competed on Star Search at age 11 and performed with Gladys Knight, the former wife of her uncle and manager, Barry Hankerson, at a five-night stand in Las Vegas. She signed a contract with Jive Records at the age of 12 and came to popular acclaim in 1994. On her way home from a music video shoot in 2001, a plane crash killed Aaliyah and eight members of her film crew. She was 22 years old.

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19 Sep, 2014

Movie to air Nov 15

Announcement0 Comments

shippThe Lifetime Network continues on with the Aaliyah biopic, Aaliyah: Princess of R&B , with Shipp as Aaliyah. The official air date is November 15, 2014. Lifetime had originally planned to shoot over the summer and release this fall, until Disney star Zendaya Coleman backed out of the project citing poor production values and moral discord.

29 Jun, 2014

Will not star as Aaliyah

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Lifetime tweets that Zendaya will no longer play the role and that the film will be shelved for now. Aaliyah’s family, who are not participating in the project, were reportedly not happy with the decision to cast her.

Let me just explain something. The reason why I chose not to do the Aaliyah movie had nothing to do with the haters or the people telling me I couldn’t do it, I wasn’t talented enough, or I wasn’t black enough. The main reasons were the production value wasn’t there, there were complications with the music rights, and I just felt like it wasn’t being handled delicately considering the situation. And I tried my best to reach out to the family on my own, and I wrote a letter, but I was unable to do so therefore I felt not morally OK with moving forward with the project.

Because it’s someone that I honor and I respect so much, it has to be 128 percent, especially for all her fans, including myself. I didn’t feel like it [the production] was all the way there, so I didn’t want to do that. And when the time comes when it’s done right and it’s 100 percent, by all means, I will be the first person there ready to go.