Clive Davis and the upcoming Whitney Houston biopic “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” confirm longstanding rumors about the late icon’s relationship with assistant Robyn Crawford.
“The movie does set the record straight. They did have a teenage, one-year affair,” Davis said in a new interview with “Extra” that aired Thursday.
Davis is a producer on the biopic starring British actress Naomi Ackie as Houston, and Stanley Tucci as the legendary music exec.
The film, which premieres on Friday, chronicles Houston’s chart-topping success, and the highs and lows of her personal life, including motherhood, her drug addiction and tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown.
Davis told “Extra” the film highlighted her relationship with Crawford, in part, because “there’d been so many articles that have attempted to trace her addiction to being a frustrated lesbian — that she never dated a man before she met Bobby, all of which was totally inaccurate,” he said.
This isn’t the first time the rumor has been addressed since Houston passed away in 2012. Crawford also confirmed she and Houston had a physical relationship in her 2019 memoir “A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston.”
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In the book, Crawford described her first kiss with Houston, writing it was “long and warm like honey.”
“As we eased out of it, our eyes locked, my nerves shot up, and my heart beat furiously,” she wrote.
“Something was happening between us. We never talked labels, like lesbian or gay. We just lived our lives, and I hoped it could go on that way forever,” she said.
Crawford and Houston’s physical relationship ended by 1982 when the singer started focusing on her singing career. She later dated Jermaine Jackson, who is also mentioned in the film. She married Brown in 1992.
As for what Houston would’ve thought about the film?
“She and I were pretty in sync on almost every issue. I’m proud and I believe Whitney would be proud too,” Davis concluded.
