Published:
December 21, 2020 at 5:16 pm
“They don’t care nothin’ about me. All they want is my voice.” These are the words Ma Rainey uses to describe her white record producers in new Netflix film
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, based on the life of trailblazing blues singer Gertrude Pridgett. With her carefully coiffed hair, bright make-up and trademarked gold teeth – Rainey (played by Viola Davis) is a vibrant figure with a powerful stage presence. But it is her voice – and not just the one she uses for singing – that shines through the story, as she pushed back against those intent on controlling her (namely her white management).
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Viola Davis as Ma Rainey (Getty Images)
Starring Viola Davis in a lead role, Netflix has released its brand new flick âMa Rainey s Black Bottomâ and it is already getting positive reviews from critics and the viewers. The movie is an adaptation of August Wilsonâs play âMa Rainey s Black Bottomâ and is based on the legendary Mother of Blues singer Ma Rainey.
The 2020 American drama film is directed by George C Wolfe and is produced by Denzel Washington, Todd Black and Dany Wolf, the film stars late Chadwick Boseman in his final film appearance, with Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo and Michael Potts in supporting roles. The film sheds light on various professional and personal aspects of the late legendary singer Ma Rainey. We shed some light on how she died and which controversy troubled her for a long time.
“The staircase was almost leaning out of the building,” Dawkins, 65, recalls by phone. “The house was actually in two parts. It was like an explosion went off and we had to come and put a giant puzzle back together.”
Three decades and much fundraising later, the fixer-upper has flowered into a museum in Columbus on Georgia’s Chattahoochee River. Now Dawkins hopes that the release of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a film adaptation of August Wilson’s play starring Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman, will put it firmly on the map.
Davis is magnificently caked in greasepaint and sweat and wears gold teeth and heavy padding, at once pantomime dame and tragic queen: she is capricious and domineering yet bears the weight of generational trauma. “They don’t care nothing about me,” she says of her white record producers. “All they want is my voice.”