In the early stages of her film career, Beyonce called out the marketing team of “Austin Powers: Goldmember” for editing her body shape on the movie’s poster.
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The film’s makeup artist Kate Biscoe said Beyonce had concerns regarding the movie poster after the team edited out her infamous curves. Biscoe said the movie poster would’ve been used to promote the film, and one of the marketing team members asked Beyonce if she liked the final touches. “He showed it to her, like, ‘Do you like it?’ And she was kind of like, ‘Yeah.’ He goes, ‘What’s the matter?’ And she says, ‘You made me too skinny. It’s not me,’” she explained.
“Then she did this hourglass shape. And he said, ‘Okay, we’ll fix that. She walked away to go do the scene, and I looked at him and smiled, like, ‘Is that the first time that you’ve ever had an actress ask to make her body bigger?’ He was like, ‘Yes. It’s going to cost me thousands of dollars, but I am going to do it.'”
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According to TOO FAB, choreographer Marguerite Derricks revealed Solange Knowles originally appeared in the film as Bey’s backup singer, but their mother, Tina Knowles-Lawson, was completely against the idea due to the sexually suggestive content in the film/
“I put her sister, Solange, in it as Foxxy’s backup singer.I remember Beyoncé and I giggling because she was young and everything in Austin Powers is so suggestive. ‘He’s got the Midas touch, but he touched it too much’ — that was a lyric that we were freaking out about for her sister.”
However, Solange’s vocals still appeared in the original track “Hey Goldmember.”
Looking back on what Beyonce said about her role in the Austin Powers film
In 2002, Beyonce made her big screen debut in “Austin Power’s Goldmember” as his comrade Foxxy Cleopatra. The character was based on two different Blaxploitation characters, Foxxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones.
“My character, Foxxy Cleopatra, is a young lady from the ’70s,” says Knowles in a phone interview from Los Angeles. “She’s a secret agent and was once involved with Austin (Myers). He went to do his secret agent thing, but she thinks he stood her up forever. They see each other again, and she’s very mad at him, but because he’s so charming, she forgives him. They become partners again and they’re after Goldmember (also Myers). Foxxy’s very fussy, very sassy. She has a dry sense of humor and uses her own little slang words. She’s the toughest Austin Powers girl so far, so you don’t want to mess with her.” she exclaimed in an interview with the Chicago Tribune.
She also spoke highly of her co-star Mike Myers and said she was initially nervous about working on the film with him.
“Mike is so generous, and he’s the funniest person I know. But I left the jokes to Mike and just tried to have a good natural timing and tried not to think about [being nervous]. I did what came naturally to me.”