Viola Davis opens up about working on breakthrough Black movie 'Ma Rainey'

Film drama Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom  may be set in the racially divided United States of the 1920s and was written almost 40 years ago, but it arrives with much to say about today.

Starring Viola Davis as Black blues singer Ma Rainey and the late Chadwick Boseman as a hot-headed trumpet player, the movie comes to Netflix on Friday as Hollywood and the United States grapple with systemic racism.

“The reason why (the film) resonates today is because racism hasn’t been destroyed. It has just evolved,” said Davis.

“You can’t go through 400 years of systemic racism and policies and practices and not have it resonate today in education, in how women are paid and how Black people are paid, and how worthy we’re seen,” she added.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom  takes place on a hot Chicago day in 1927 during a tense recording session where the diva-like singer engages in a battle of wills with her white manager and her band over money and control of her music.

Davis, who won a supporting actress Oscar in 2017 and is widely expected to be nominated next year, said she saw Ma as a liberated woman “meaning she was not a woman of her time because she was a woman who unapologetically knew her worth.” - Reuters