Viola Davis to sing the blues in Netflix film about queer musical legend
Viola Davis will bring her Oscar-winning acting chops to a film adaptation of the August Wilson play Ma Raineys Black Bottom, dramatizing a moment in the life of the queer blues singer.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the upcoming Netflix film follows Rainey as she makes a record in a studio in 1920s Chicago, where tensions boil over between her, her white agent and producer and the bandmates.
Actor and playwright Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who previously directed an Off-Broadway production of the August Wilson play The Piano Lesson, will adapt Ma Raineys Black Bottom for the screen. George C. Wolfe, the Tony-winning director of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, will direct the film. And Denzel Washington Daviss costar in the Broadway revival and film adaptation of Fences, another Wilson play will serve as producer.
Rainey, who died in 1939 at the reported age of 53, was married to a man, but many of her lyrics reference trysts with women. Example: They said I do it, aint nobody caught me / Sure got to prove it on me / Went out last night with a crowd of my friends / They mustve been women, cause I dont like no men.
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