Zoe Saldana has decided to joined the Nina Simone biopic, Nina.
Mary J. Blige was previously attached to star as Simone but has opted out of the project. Up until this past June, Blige was still slated to play in the movie. In an interview, she spoke about the film’s delay saying, “It’s in a holding pattern. I don’t really have anything to tell you, except for that right now.” Now, the R&B star has been removed from the casting list, and Saldana has reportedly stepped in to play the leading role of the jazz singer.
Nina is based on Simone’s 1992 autobiography “I Put A Spell On You”, which told the story of Simone’s relationship with her assistant, Clifton Henderson (David Oyelowo), that occurred in her later years.
Nina originally planned a career as a classical pianist, but was denied a scholarship to Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute Of Music because she was black. Dubbed the high priestess of soul, she rose to fame as a jazz singer and became a prominent member of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. Her song “To Be Young, Gifted And Black” was an anthem of the movement. The Sinnerman star stopped paying taxes in the US as a protest against the Vietnam War, which made her an exile from the States in her later life. To avoid arrest, she settled in Barbados where she had a long relationship with its Prime Minister Errol Barrow. The singer also lived in Liberia, Switzerland and the Netherlands, and died in the South of France in 2003 (Wiki).
The upcoming project is based out of Ealing Studios in the UK. More details on the start date coming soon…
Why you Mr. Castle continue to right the same article about Zoe playing Nina is nothing but promoting the blatant disrespect to Nina Simone’s hard earned body of work. A more interesting article would be to interviews the family or Zoe herself. I promise considering how hesitant Dominicans are to identify themselves as black for starters, tell a Domincan they are black and you will get the side eye of ” child please”. There is such a blatant display of intra-racism within the hispanic community for starters it’s so hypocritical when I hear latino actors who obviously are black use the” I’m proud to be ____ or _______” depending on its audience or specific interviewer. Zoe claims its reverse racism that the black community has pushed back on her in its criticisms and not embracing her but as in the case of an American black actress like Whoopi Goldberg when years back was going to take on the role of Celia Cruz, ALL HELL broke loose by Cubans that how could a BLACK actress portray someone like Celia Cruz, It’s the same thing regardless of different Caribbean locations, for all the united mumbo jumbo, there’s still the deep denial of the”hating” that goes on between latin and black women, whether they are latin black is irrelevant, same as the shade between light and dark skin blacks in America. It’s all so intertwined and the only one that get most affected by so much ignorance at the end of the day are the children who grow up believing all these mix messages on images of beauty in women of color. Just as a poor piss job and substandard wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy bottom level writing in the pic “Colombiana”, she missed the mark, she didn’t utter one word of a Colombian accent or dialect, it was cliche scene guys with 80’s porn mustache with machine guns ala Miami vice, poor piss job in acting as well. It was like they wanted to someone do a take on a “Spanish Ghetto version of La Femme Nikita or Point of no return, either way same crap and those movies about these female heroines were actually way better. Colombian a movie by Luc Besson casted Zoe without any real level of consideration of how it might affect Colombian women and how even in 2012 still portraying this country like 70’s Escobar drug wars, so predictable and lazy acting and screenwriting. Not only did Zoe dismiss theColombia people’s protesting of slandering a its culture but just said it was stupid for people to be so offended by it, I wonder if her ballsy attitude and dismissive demeanor will rear its ugly head toward the black community this time when she goes around touting her” I was in Avatar box office card” card as street-cred.
until you right first by your communities , making big popcorn movies with rich white directors does nothing but remind everyone the “hollywood” version is more important than standing up for true artistic integrity like Nina Simone spend her entire life lifting up her culture and community.