Netflix has dropped the trailer for A Jazzman’s Blues, the upcoming film from Tyler Perry.
Here’s the official synopsis:
A sweeping tale of forbidden love, A JAZZMAN’S BLUES unspools forty years of secrets and lies soundtracked by juke joint blues in the deep South. Written, directed and produced by Perry, the film stars Joshua Boone and Solea Pfeiffer as star-crossed lovers Bayou and Leanne.
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A zombie film and a World War II-set film are upcoming projects that Tyler Perry says he has in the works.
A prolific director, Perry is no stranger to premiering multiple projects in a year. However, A Jazzman’s Blues, premiering on Netflix next month, allowed him to savor his role as filmmaker and producer.
"It's the happiest I've ever been making a film because it was a joy, a peacetime," he explained to Shadow and Act during a conversation before a panel on the film at the Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival.
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For Tyler Perry, now is the time for dreaming. Nearly 30 years in the making, the multi-hyphenate talent presented clips from his forthcoming sweeping epic, A Jazzman’s Blues, at the 20th annual Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival on Aug. 6.
Told over 50 years from 1937 to 1987, the romantic drama follows the forbidden romance between lovers Bayou (Joshua Boone) and Leanne (Solea Pfeiffer).
Filmed with cinematography by Brett Pawlak, the film unravels five decades of secrets and lies entwined with a juke joint blues soundtrack. The film also stars Amirah Vann, Austin Scott, Milauna Jemai Jackson, Brent Antonello, Brad Benedict, Kario Marcel, Lana Young, and Ryan Eggold. Songs for the film were arranged and produced by multi-Grammy winner and two-time Academy Award nominee Terence Blanchard with music by Aaron Zigman. The choreography was done by the legendary Debbie Allen.
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After more than two decades in the entertainment industry, Tyler Perry is switching things up once again. Just seven months after the debut of his first R-rated psychological thriller, Acrimony, Perry is premiering his first R-rated comedy, Nobody’s Fool. Shot in just ten days, the romantic comedy with a twist brings together The Haves and the Have Nots darling Tika Sumpter along with Emmy winner, Tiffany Haddish. Perry was well aware of Haddish's talent before her breakout role in Girls Trip, the director and actress worked together back in 2014 on Perry’s OWN series If Loving You Is Wrong. In Nobody’s Fool, he paired Haddish and Sumpter up as sisters, Tanya and Danika respectively. In the movie, the sisters are reunited after the hilarious but hot-headed Tanya is released from prison after a five-year stint.
Tanya’s re-entry into Danika's life upends the straight-laced advertising executive's picture perfect world including her online relationship with a man that Tanya is confident is "catfishing" her sister. Perry didn’t just stop with Haddish and Sumpter — he rounded out his raunchy and entertaining rom-com with Power star Omari Hardwick as Frank, Tanya’s boss who is desperately interested in Danika, E.G.O.T. legend Whoppi Goldberg as the Tanya and Danika's mom, Lola and the mega-talented Amber Riley as Danika’s bestie, Callie.
Ahead of the film’s premiere Shadow and Act got the opportunity to sit down with Tyler Perry and the cast to chat about Nobody's Fool and how much fun they had while making it.
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Since the beginning of time, women have been dismissed as crazed or deranged, their emotions ridiculed and shoved aside as irrational or without merit. Though mental illness and unhealthy behaviors are certainly very real, women aren’t often allotted the space to tell their stories and to speak their truths without fear of backlash or being confined to some heinous outdated stereotype. In his new suspense thriller Acrimony, Tyler Perry sets the stage for one woman, Melinda Gayle (portrayed by Academy Award nominee Taraji P. Henson) to tell her story — a tale riddled with heartbreak and betrayal. Beautifully shot in crisp, dark greys, the film opens in the aftermath of Melinda and her ex-husband Robert’s (portrayed by Lyriq Bent) marriage. It’s clear from her outbursts and enraged emotional state that Melinda is not dealing with the demise of her relationship well. Order by the courts to attend counseling sessions, a reluctant Melinda dials back time eighteen years and begins to piece together the romance between herself and Robert – which started in college and eventually led to the inside of a courtroom.
Henson, as usual, is intensely captivating as Melinda, her fury literally penetrates the screen as she relays the story of her relationship to her therapist and to the audience. Perry captures her various emotional states, slowly building to her current boiling point. Bent, who rose to prominence in the Saw franchise and who currently sizzles as Jamie Overstreet in Netflix’sShe’s Gotta Have It is also fantastic. The chemistry between the actors is very much that of two people who have spent nearly two-decades of their lives with one another.
Instead of forcing Henson and Bent to play younger versions of themselves, relative newcomers Ajiona Alexus (who plays young Cookie on Empire), and Antonio Madison are wonderfully cast as young Melinda and young Robert respectively. Their stellar performances with all of the levity, earnestness, and hope of youth created a steady foundation. They were also able to connect their characters seamlessly with Bent and Henson's older version.
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Lyriq Bent is captivating. At six-feet tall, the dashing actor exudes warmth and maturity on screen and in real life. Since stepping into the entertainment industry in the early 2000s, Bent has been gaining momentum, starring in everything from the infamous Saw franchise to the acclaimed mini-series, The Book of Negros and more recently, in Spike Lee’s Netflix joint, She’s Gotta Have It. However, Bent’s latest venture, starring opposite Taraji P. Henson in Tyler Perry’s R-rated crime thriller,Acrimony will reveal a different side of the Kingston native. Ahead of the film’s premiere, Bent and I sat down to chat about the flick, working with Perry, and why he and Henson just clicked. Though he’s been in the industry for some time, Bent hadn’t had the opportunity to work with Perry until now. "(Acrimony) was so different than what (Tyler Perry’s) normally done," he explained. "The opportunity to help him create a beautiful story in a different genre was important to me because I can see we have to tell our own stories, and Tyler's done more than his part in trying to do so. Now that he has so many films under his belt, he felt it necessary to change genres, so I felt very lucky that he thought that I was capable or that he had the confidence in me to make that crossover."
For Bent, Acrimony is much more than a tale of an embittered, unhinged woman out for revenge. The foundation of the film was grounded in a young romance between Bent and Henson's characters Robert and Melinda which blossomed over time. "I liked the fact that it's a story about human nature," he revealed. "It's about emotions. It's about two people who love each other and try to build a life together, and they go through an emotional rollercoaster. They try to bring it all back home at the end of the day."
I’ve personally never felt that characters of African decent should be inherently good, educated, or of a particular caliber in order to be presented in film and on television. In my opinion, that is an argument of past centuries, when the narrative of Black Americans on screen may have needed a particular sort of trajectory. I also feel that everyone has a right to tell their stories, but I don’t feel that these stories should be mediocre or inherently stereotypical, which is why I often find the work of Tyler Perry extremely problematic. Still, despite my criticisms and the criticisms of others, Perry has carved out a prolific path for himself in the entertainment industry. From his stage plays to his body of films, and now with four shows on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN Network, including, “Love Thy Neighbor” and “The Haves and the Have Nots”, which premièred last week to over 3 million viewers, it’s clear that his audience is always eager to tune in.
At a recent press event for “The Haves and the Have Nots” and “Love Thy Neighbor”, Tyler Perry, as well as some of the casts from both series, including John Schneider, Angela Robinson, Patrice Lovely, and Palmer Williams sat down to talk about the success of the shows, Perry’s writing process, and being a part of OWN Network. Shadow and Act was there to take it all in. Here are some of the highlights.
On the Evolution of Both “The Haves and the Have Nots” and “Love Thy Neighbor”
Tyler Perry: What’s amazing about this, is that we are about to cross one hundred episodes for both of these shows. What’s so great about it is, that you start one way, but the characters dictate where they want to go, and how they want to go. If you look at a show when it first starts, you go, ‘hum…how is going to go?’ but by the tenth episode, you see the characters start to gel, and you really start to believe them. That’s what has happened with both of these shows. By episode fifteen we had settled in. I think at this point in both the shows, the characters have evolved and the show has a evolved. With Veronica (Angela Robinson ‘HAHN’) having one or two lines in the first show, I didn’t know she was going to turn out to be this character, but I love the madness of it. I love the insanity of it.
On the Writing Process
TP: I’ve said this before, I don’t have a writer’s room, I write all of the shows myself. Ninety-one episodes a season, I’m sitting at the computer writing, writing and writing. I want the voice to be authentic, so the audience is hearing from me and not other writers. There are a lot of other shows on the air that are fantastic shows, but they have writer’s rooms. The people that we love the most only write one or two episodes a season. What’s great about it when your writing for actors like this, who are tremendously talented, you can throw anything at them. I sit in a room and as I’m sitting at the computer, and I can hear these characters talking. The only thing that is difficult for me is to force one show out of my head so that Eddie doesn’t sound like Joe, or that Mama Hattie doesn’t sound like Angela which in a way they kind of do. If you look at the characters themselves, and the shows themselves they are very different and don’t think people really give credit to how different each show is. The pleasure that I take is being at work for the actual characters themselves. So, the minute that they stop talking we have a problem.
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Image: Tyler Perry
