Janet Jackson did not have to dig very deep for inspiration while filming some emotional scenes in the upcoming Tyler Perry movie “Why Did I Get Married Too?” On Thursday night’s “Tonight Show,” she told Jay Leno that she thought about the death of her brother Michael Jackson last June and her two divorces while filming a scene in which her character suffers an emotional breakdown.

The “Why Did I Get Married?” sequel, about four couples who re-evaluate their marriages while on an annual vacation, features a scene in which Jackson’s character smashes a glass table with a golf club during an emotional outburst. Leno asked the singer/actress how far down she had to drill to dredge up those feelings.

“You have to dig deep, but there was some stuff that was right there for me,” Jackson said. “Stuff that had just happened with my brother passing and also relationships. Experiencing exactly that.”

Though she’s sold tens of millions of albums and wrote “Nothing,” the movie’s theme song, Jackson told Leno that acting is her first love. “Acting [is] more challenging,” she said. “I love them both, but acting is more of a challenge for me. And that is my first passion.”

The singer, 43, said she’s also working on a book called “True You,” about her history of weight loss and weight gain.

“People have always ask me about the weight loss, weight gain and how I got it off,” she said. “Instead of writing a book about nutrition and how I got it off in times when I’ve really needed to, I decided to start from the beginning, start from my childhood. It’s not an autobiography, but there were certain events in my childhood that created issues that may have made it an issue for me, weight loss, weight gain and self-esteem, things like that.”

While the book is intended for both adults and children, Jackson said one of the stories that she thinks will really resonate with younger women details the time when, as a teenager, she was asked to lose weight during her run on the sitcom “Good Times.”

“I wasn’t a heavy kid on the show, but I was 10 years old when I first started, [and] I was developing very quickly,” she said. “They would put gauze around my chest to make me smaller, and I think that has an effect on you, certain things like that when you’re growing up. As if who you are isn’t good enough.”