Everett
Director Lee Daniels was joined by U.S. Representatives Maxine Waters and Bobby Rush for Wednesday night's premiere, which also featured conversations with Oprah Winfrey and Kerry Washington.
Hulu's
The United States vs. Billie Holiday hosted its virtual premiere on Wednesday night, with appearances from U.S. Representatives Maxine Waters and Bobby Rush and director Lee Daniels.
The film stars Andra Day as Holiday, the 1940s jazz singer who is targeted for a sting operation by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics after she refuses to stop singing her song "Strange Fruit," which protests the lynching of Black Americans.
"I did not know that Billie Holiday kicked off the civil rights movement as we know it to be, that her song 'Strange Fruit,' about Black people being lynched, was stopped by the government," Daniels said in a video statement before the screening. "The government didn't want this song to happen and Billy, under all adversity, just kept plowing away to make sure that we all heard it."