Queen Latifah will reportedly star as singer Bessie Smith in HBO film
Queen Latifah will play the blues singer in a movie titled 'Bessie' which will be based on the biography of the same name by Chris Albertson.
Queen Latifah will reportedly star in an adaptation of Chris Albertson's biography about Bessie Smith, titled 'Bessie.'
Dan Steinberg/Invision/AP
Actress Queen Latifah will reportedly star in an HBO adaptation of the biography “Bessie” by Chris Albertson that tells the story of the life of blues singer Bessie Smith.
According to Deadline writer Nellie Andreeva, the film, also titled “Bessie,” “chronicles how Smith overcame her tempestuous personal life to become one of the most acclaimed performing and recording artists of the 1920s and ’30s, earning the nickname Empress of the Blues.”
HBO did well this past spring with another original movie focusing on a musician – the movie “Behind the Candelabra,” which premiered this past May, starred Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Douglas as his boyfriend Scott Thorson and Douglas won an Emmy for the role, with the movie itself also taking the Outstanding Miniseries or Movie prize and Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries or Movie award for helmer Steven Soderbergh.
The book “Bessie” was originally published in 1971.