The Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role went to Viola Davis for the 2016 film adaptation of August Wilson’s Fences. And sometimes you stick with what worked before, so another Wilson adaptation, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, is headed to Netflix, with Davis starring as legendary lesbian “Queen of the Blues” Rainey. The story concerns Rainey recording a record in 1920s Chicago, and all the tensions that accompanied her artistic and personal life. Taylour Paige (Hit The Floor) will play Rainey’s lover, Dussie Mae, and other notable co-stars include Chadwick Boseman and Fear the Walking Dead’s Colman Domingo. Denzel Washington, who starred with Davis in Fences, is producing, actor-writer Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Billions) is adapting the play for the screen, and gay theater director and filmmaker George C. Wolfe (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks) will direct. This one’s going to hit Netflix in 2020, and probably scoop up its share of award nominations soon after. Brush up on your blues before then.
Bill Pullman, Eddie Izzard and Diplo have joined the cast of Covers, the upcoming comedy from Focus Features, with a screenplay by first-timer Flora Greeson, to be directed by Nisha Ganatra (Late Night, and the ’90s lesbian classic Chutney Popcorn). The three new cast members will join Dakota Johnson, Tracee Ellis Ross and Ice Cube in a love story set in the fast-paced Los Angeles music scene. If the name Diplo is unfamiliar to you, it’s because you’re not paying enough attention to the world of DJs-as-music-producers, because he’s worked with Sia, Lil Nas X and Beyoncé, to name a few, and this will be his first major acting assignment. Production on this one is taking place right now, with a drop date sometime in 2020. We don’t know who sings in the film, but if we learned anything from 2000’s Duets, the one where Paul Giamatti belted out an Otis Redding song and Huey Lewis crooned “Cruising” with Gwyneth Paltrow, it’s never to be surprised.
Romeo San Vicente loves Viola and can’t wait for How to Get Away with Murder to resurface!
