But one night as the actors met at a restaurant they’d stay at until closing, Potts remembers in the making-of book “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: The Journey From Stage to Screen” (Freedman, 2020), the humility he carried with him impressed his castmates to their surprise, he’d walked there from the hotel on his own. Thanks to his role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Boseman was a highly recognizable global icon. There, Boseman, Davis, Domingo and actors Michael Potts and Glynn Turman - who round out the core ensemble as bassist Slow Drag and piano man Toledo, respectively - forged a bond over intimate dinners. I think that we knew that as a musical adaptation, the musical part of the filming was like playing it - like jazz, like the blues.”Īdapted from Wilson’s landmark “Century Cycle” of 10 plays spanning African American life throughout the 20th century, “Ma Rainey” was filmed in the playwright’s hometown of Pittsburgh (standing in for Chicago), where the cast assembled ahead of filming for extensive rehearsals. “You take part of your spirit and your soul and you let that spawn the work. “We all danced with each other because that’s what you do as jazz musicians, as blues musicians,” said Domingo, who plays Cutler, the bandleader whose barbed repartee with Boseman’s Levee builds to an explosive crescendo.
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Wolfe from a screenplay by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, the film is dedicated to Boseman “in celebration of his artistry and heart” and could nab him a posthumous Oscar nomination for best actor.īoseman also could earn a supporting actor nod for his charismatic turn this year as “Stormin’” Norm Holloway, the leader of a squad of Black American soldiers, in Spike Lee’s Vietnam War drama “Da 5 Bloods.”īut about that dance. But costar Colman Domingo remembers what Boseman said as the “Black Panther” star prepared to pour his all into the incendiary role that would mark his final screen performance: “He said, ‘I can’t wait to dance with you, Colman.’”īoseman, who died in August at the age of 43, commits a fiery and enthralling turn to the 1920s-set “Ma Rainey” as Levee, the talented and ambitious cornet player in a band hired to back blues legend Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (Viola Davis) as she records her latest album.Īs the afternoon session unfolds in the film, now available on Netflix, music soars, tempers flare and tensions rise between band members, while Ma battles a white manager and producer trying to squeeze another hit record out of her. When Chadwick Boseman arrived in Pittsburgh in 2019 to film the August Wilson adaptation “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” his castmates didn’t know that he’d been privately battling cancer for three years.