Queen Latifah based ‘Chicago’ character on her grandmother

Queen Latifah has revealed that she had a very personal inspiration for playing Matron “Mama” Morton in Chicago: her grandmother.

“You know my grandmother would, would show me pictures of herself on cruise ships sitting at the captain’s table as a kid, so she let me know there’s a world out there,” Latifah told Kerry Washington on a recent episode of Washington’s Street You Grew Up On podcast. “And so I remember doing Chicago…Rob Marshall, our amazing director on that movie, kept saying, ‘Just think: Sophie Tucker. Sophie Tucker: She’s buxom, she wears sequins, and she does this.’ And I was like ‘Oh, I don’t know Sophie Tucker, but that sounds like my grandmother…. I’m gonna do my grandmother. I got this, okay.'”

Tucker was a singer and comedic actress who died in the 1966.

But Latifah’s strategy worked well. The actress received her only Oscar nomination (so far) for her work in the adaptation of the long-running stage musical, which costarred Renée Zellweger, as Roxie Hart, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, as Velma Kelly. Richard Gere, Taye Diggs, and John C. Reilly were also part of the cast. Though she didn’t win in the category of Best Supporting Actress, the movie won Best Picture.

The story in Chicago is that Morton is the corrupt overseer of the woman’s prison that Hart has been sent to, after fatally shooting her paramour. Kelly is one of her fellow prisoners — she killed her husband and sister after finding them in bed together — who Hart has admired from afar, because of her fame as a singer.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Morton is key, because she has the power to make their lives behind bars better or much more intolerable. She can also connect them to the right people, including suave, big-time lawyer Billy Flynn (Gere), who helps Hart gain the sympathy and adoration of the public ahead of her trial.

Latifah’s most powerful scene in the film is when she performs the song “When You’re Good to Mama,” in which she explains just how a relationship with her works.

Latifah can currently be seen in the fifth season of drama The Equalizer Sundays on CBS. Watch her full interview with Washington on Street You Grew Up On above.