A New Biopic Starring Andra Day Reveals the Untold Story of Billie Holiday
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
The United States vs. Billie Holiday is the movie Lee Daniels has been waiting to make since he was 13 years old. “I was in Philadelphia and had gone to a theater that my grandfather was managing,” says Daniels, the Oscar-nominated director of Precious. “I saw Lady Sings the Blues and was totally blown away.” The 1972 film, which starred Diana Ross as Holiday, showed Daniels something he had never seen before at the movies. “It was the ultimate Black experience,” he says. “It was the first time I saw me and my family and our world up onscreen—and I wanted to do that.”
Daniels’s film, which premieres February 26 on Hulu, is a fulfillment of that wish. The movie, written by Suzan-Lori Parks and starring singer Andra Day, in her first major film role, as Holiday, tells the story of Holiday not just as a glamorous and troubled entertainer but as the target of a government sting operation that involved drug charges as punishment for her performance of politically charged songs to racially integrated audiences.
“Billie Holiday was, as I see it, our first civil rights leader,” Daniels says. “She kicked off the movement by refusing to stop singing ‘Strange Fruit’ despite the government’s doggedness in trying to take her down. It hit me that her story began my career, and it’s one that’s important to the fabric of America.”
It’s also a chance for Holiday, whose life has been the inspiration for movies and Broadway shows but whose complicated true story has never been told entirely, to get what Daniels sees as her due.
“The night before our last day of shooting, I had a dream that I ran into Billie Holiday,” he says. “I was in Philadelphia, coming out of a building, and I ran into her. I said, ‘I’m Lee Daniels and I’m doing your life story.’ She looked at me and asked, ‘Are you going to do me right?’ I said, ‘I promise I will.’ She smiled, and that was the end of the dream. I think I’ve done her right, and I think she’d be really happy.”
This story appears in the March 2021 issue of Town & Country.
SUBSCRIBE NOW
You Might Also Like
