In the first trailer for George C. Wolfe’s adaptation of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, what madame says goes. That’s always the case for us and Viola Davis, who stars as the powerhouse vocalist based on the real “Mother of Blues” who is determined to control some of that power. Throughout a recording session in 1927 Chicago, Ma Rainey commands her band like a matriarch, draped in shimmering tunics and lined in furs, while pushing back against her white management. “They don’t care nothing about me,” Davis says in a clip they’ll surely play before she accepts her Oscar. “All they want is my voice.” Meanwhile, her ambitious trumpeter, Levee (Chadwick Boseman), is riling up everyone in the small room with stories, arguments, and his wandering eye for Ma’s girlfriend, Dussie Mae (Taylour Paige). “You don’t know nothing about what kind of blood I got, what kind of heart I got beating here,” Boseman’s sly grin explodes with passion. This adaptation of August Wilson’s classic is the late Boseman’s final performance before he died of colon cancer at age 43. Find it in select theaters this November or on Netflix December 18.
