Ed Bark

12:14 PM CDT on Monday, July 17, 2006

By ED BARK / The Dallas Morning News

A clip from her autobiographical movie is more than enough to bring Fantasia Barrino to tears while she squeezes director Debbie Allen's hand for support.

One scene shows her slapping an abusive boyfriend and then telling him, "That's what you get."

"That's what you get," he retorts, knocking her hard off a wall.

It's not an act, at least not in the usual sense. The 2004 American Idol champ is playing herself in Lifetime's The Fantasia Barrino Story: Life Is Not a Fairy Tale, which depicts her hard-knocks rise from unmarried teenage mother to national singing celebrity. It's based on last year's book of the same name.

"I went through different emotions," she said Friday after Ms. Allen dabbed at her face. "I didn't think it was going to be tough going back to play myself, but it was."

Lifetime will premiere the film Aug. 19. And since business is business, Ms. Barrino's second CD is due in stores "right before the movie drops," she said after an interview session.

Its tentative title is Young Girl, Old Soul.

"Get ready to rock," she said, " 'cause I'm acting cra-a-azed."

Her first CD, Free Yourself, had respectable sales and got four Grammy nominations. But Idol judge Simon Cowell recently said Ms. Barrino must make better song selections to catch up with Kelly Clarkson, who's arguably the hottest pop singer in the land. In his view, they're otherwise equally talented.

"I wouldn't say he's wrong," Ms. Barrino, 22, said, noting that her inaugural CD was rushed into production while she simultaneously toured with Idol's top 10 finishers.

"I didn't have enough time to give my input on what I wanted to do," she said. "It was like every song I was getting was about how I'm hurting and how I'm in pain. But now I have the opportunity to test the music I like. So that's what I want to do with this album. I want to do different types of music."

Her daughter, Zion, who turns 5 next month, already is showing signs of being a material girl.

"She's bad. She's starting to realize that Mommy has money. So she wakes up and says, 'I want to go shopping.' She loves clothes. But you've got to be wise with your money because you never know what might happen."

Her co-stars in the Lifetime movie include Loretta Devine as Ms. Barrino's grandma, Addie Collins; Viola Davis as her mother, Diane; and Kadeem Hardison as her father, JoJo.

The accomplished Ms. Devine, whose long list of credits includes Crash and Grey's Anatomy, is no fan of reality shows because they're "taking all our jobs." But she made an exception to phone in an American Idol vote for Ms. Barrino, whose Cinderella story inspired her.

"I think you're going to be amazed at the natural talent this child has" as an actor, Ms. Devine said.

The filmmakers purchased "very expensive" rights to about five minutes of American Idol clips, Ms. Allen said. Mercifully then, there'll be no Simon Cowell or Paula Abdul impersonators to react to the real-life Ms. Barrino's performances.

"I didn't even think I was going to make it to the top two," she said. "I wasn't the perfect person that they thought an American Idol should be. ... But they looked past my faults and they gave me a chance."

• Damon Wayans' new half-hour sketch-comedy series for Showtime won't be for the faint of heart or family newspapers.

Let's just say he's cleansing his palate, and just about every other body part, of My Wife and Kids. The ABC sitcom made him very rich during its five-year run, he told TV critics Friday. But it also lulled him into playing it safe.

"I wanted my son to get a pony pregnant. They said no," Mr. Wayans said as a means of grossly exaggerating his point.

More to the point: "You get lazy. Money will make you very comfortable. ... I kind of lost my passion."

He's bringing eight repertory players, including son Damon Jr., to The Underground, which is to premiere Sept. 14. It's a return to his In Living Color roots, except that the material will be far bluer.

"This is a very repressed society we live in, and very hypocritical," Mr. Wayans said. "We're trying to maintain an image of squeaky clean. We still live in the 1940s in terms of censorship."

He'd rather live dangerously again. Or as a Showtime promotional clip put it: "He's been locked up by network censors. This fall we're gonna set him free."

E-mail ebark@dallasnews.com