'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' Star Taylour Paige on Black Womanhood and the Blues
Netflix’s newly released Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom takes place on a stiflingly hot day in 1927 Chicago, where the titular Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) and her backing band spend the afternoon in a recording studio working on a new song. Based on August Wilson’s 1982 play of the same name, the story features a fictionalized version of the Mother of the Blues as she demands the respect of the white men recording her music and clashes with the members of her band, which includes Cutler (Colman Domingo), Slow Drag (Michael Potts), Levee (the late Chadwick Boseman), and Toledo (Glynn Turman). The heat of the George C. Wolfe-directed film can be felt not only in the sweltering setting but through the struggle and oppression of all of the Black musicians in the room who turn that pain into the blues.
Caught up in the band’s world is Dussie Mae, the young lover of Ma, played by Taylour Paige. As she gets involved with Boseman’s Levee, Dussie becomes more than an ornamental fixture, but a symbol of Black sexuality and queerness. “Dussie is a smaller puzzle piece in this story,” Paige tells L’OFFICIEL. “But she lives in me and she lives on. I think of her as an extension of those in the 1920s, and the 1900s, and the 1860s that we never got to hear from.”
Paige’s character adds another layer to the Black narratives at play, and the actress handles it with a flirtatious physicality that provides reprieve from the at times heavy film. It’s something Paige has experience with as a trained dancer, also bringing that physical awareness to her role as Ahsha Hayes in VH1’s Hit the Floor and, more recently, as the titular character in the stripper comedy-drama Zola.
Here, Paige speaks with L’OFFICIEL about Ma Rainey and Wilson’s legacy, the importance of blues, and what Dussie has in common with Black women everywhere.
L’OFFICIEL: Were you familiar with August Wilson's play before taking on this role?
Taylour Paige: Yes, August is such a staple in the fabric of [not only] African-American history, but American history. He's literally a prophet, a genius. Somehow he was able to seamlessly weave the line between the past, present, and future. It's crazy, we're talking about something of the past, presently that will affect our future, but when he was talking about it he was talking about the past which is affecting our future now. It's pretty special.
L'O: How did you prepare for playing a Black woman in the 1920s?
TP: Looking at images and [asking] who are we the descendents of? How would Dussie walk? How would Dussie talk? Slavery just ended, essentially. There's a heaviness and a pain and a PTSD felt, however we're in a time where entertainment and moving up North had some promise. There's like 100,000 Black people in the North at this point. Taking all that into consideration, the atmosphere, I worked it from the inside out. What does Dussie want? Dussie wants to feel free. Dussie wants to feel love. Dussie wants to feel like she's not disposable in a world that tells her she is. In the story, she's not contributing any kind of talent, so she's constantly auditioning for her worth, for some kind of validation. I related it back to times that I've personally felt like that, and then went from there. To be a woman and then to be a Black woman is to live in a state of being gaslit all the time. Like, why are you being so insane? Why are you so angry? Why are you so irrational? Why are you so over-reactive? We don't know the battles that everyone's fighting, facing, processing, but I think to be Black and to be a woman and to be descendents of the very people that have been considered non-human, how do you put one foot in front of the other?
L'O: Dussie is Ma's girlfriend, but she starts an affair with Levee. What do you think her motivations were?
TP: There's an innocence to Dussie. [She’s] looking for an opportunity, and honestly all of them are. All of them are looking for some kind of escape, and I think Dussie's relationship with Ma and Levee is that. She's the only one who ever gets to see these very dominant, polarizing characters as gentle. Be more human, be more calm, be more quiet. She's like the divine feminine.
L'O: While your character doesn't have a lot of dialogue in the movie, she brings more of a physical presence. How did you work with George, the director, on creating Dussie's identity through movement rather than text?
TP: George is such a genius and a historian. [He’s] so detailed, and isn't going to let any minutiae go without being talked about, from what we're eating, to how hot it is, to what are we thinking, feeling, doing. I remember when we wrapped I thanked him for allowing me to play, and he was like, "You thanked me for something that you innately have and do already." When I usually approach a character, because I'm a dancer, I'm so aware of my body. This is something that I've had to work on–it can be an impediment, because you're so conscious of your body that you're not really present. Because I feel like I'm more of a dancer person than human or something, I wanted to look like, Sure, Dussie can dance. It's inherently in her–she's a Black woman, and I think dancing, and singing, and the blues is all a natural way that the culture heals, but I didn't want her to look trained. I just wanted her to look like she bops around and she feels it. She's moving because she hears the music, she's not moving because she can actually--you know, she's not trained or anything.
L'O: Were there any people or influences from the 1920s that helped you approach your character?
TP: Ann Roth [the costume designer] brought a lot of images to look at. I also just gave myself a bit of a spiritual ritual where I just asked the spirit and energy of Dussie. Even though Dussie is fictitious, I think she definitely existed as the spirit of a woman who never really quite got to reach her dream or even figure out what they were. I took all of that and used it to move my body, and then I thought about posture and how women were treated then and what that means–the overcompensating, how to get attention, and a little bit of mystique.
L'O: Dussie, like your character in Zola, is a Black woman owning her sexual agency, even though they exist a century apart. What did you find they have in common when playing these roles?
TP: I think that the through line is that, in a world that's telling you that you don't matter, that your existence has to be bargained for, these women are finding ways to survive. And that's a celebration in and of itself. You feel worthy of time being still, even though one could simply just give it all up. I think that–1920, 2020–it’s rough to be on this planet. We're all doing the best we can. To open your eyes and put one foot in front of the other is such an act of resistance. To be a person of color and to do that is a whole other dynamic. It's so complicated, hurtful, exhausting, and you just never really know. I'm a woman and I'm a Black woman, so these characters, though they are different, they're one in the same because they're just extensions of the souls of people who deserve to be here and deserve to be happy and deserve to defend that. They find agency through their power, which is their vagina–and so much more. But it’s sacred to decide what you want to do with it, it's sacred what you decide not to do with it. You're a woman, you're powerful, you give life, you create from the unseen, you nurture, you fill the in-betweens, you're smart. Though they are different time periods, where there is a Zola there was a Dussie, who was figuring out how to survive and make it work.
L'O: Ma Rainey centers on creating blues music. Do you have a personal connection to the genre?
TP: I didn't grow up with the blues in my home, but as I got older I absorbed it. I love jazz music which is an extension of blues. Blues is a distinct processing of African-American culture, and it came out of social conditions and trauma and unhealed, unheard pain. The blues is resisting all of the lies that people have told about us, the lies of our inhumanity, the lies about our danger and what we do. There's just this whole lying-ass narrative about Black people, I think the blues is how you process that. Then you have white artists, who you see in the film, but you see it today too, where they're particularly eager to appropriate Black styles. They may not be wholeheartedly aware, or awake into the fact that they don't even know where it comes from. I'm not saying that not everyone has pain, but they don't understand the insecurity there or types of stakes. It's copying the work of something you can't even feel. This societal pressure, the waking up and feeling like you don't matter, and so the blues are really specific to the Black experience because it's the beginning of when we actually got to hear people process what they've come from and how they're dealing with it today, and yesterday. Also today, the acting, dancing, singing, Broadway, everything we know and love, we wouldn't have without the blues.
L'O: Because of the pandemic, the film released without the usual fanfare of a movie premiere and being able to reunite with the cast. How are you feeling?
TP: I've been really emotional and happy that it's out. I'm happy that August lives on, I'm happy that Chadwick lives on. I think that they live on regardless, right? Chadwick is so special, and bowed out with such integrity and grace and I just hope to be able to do the same. I love my cast so much, I'm in such awe of these people's artistry. To have your work touch people, and us to be able to have these conversations, I feel very much honored to be a part of it and connected to this in that I've done enough inner work to be available to this kind of role. It's a project that's so very rich, immeasurable but just big because it feels heavy and weighted and grounded, but also just felt so high-vibrating and airy and out there.
