Andra Day and Lee Daniels | A Songbird, a Vantage Point, and an Incandescent Call for Uprising

Left to right: Andra wears ALEXANDRE VAUTHIER dress, LE SILLA shoes, and BVLGARI necklace, earrings, and rings. Lee wears DUNHILL coat, shirt, and pants.

“We are altogether too quick to disclaim responsibility for the fate which overtakes—so often—so many gifted, driven, and erratic artists... Now Billie Holiday has escaped forever from managers, landlords, locked hotels, fear, poverty, illness, and the watchdogs of morality and the law. ‘I had a long way to go,’ she used to sing. Well she made it, all the way from Catfish Row, and no one has managed to define her yet.”

JAMES BALDWIN, September 1959.

And yet every morning is a chance to define yourself anew. So new feature film The United States Vs. Billie Holiday fearlessly takes on Baldwin’s challenge, to deliver a stirring redefinition of the life of the enigmatic diva. In the skilled hands of director Lee Daniels (The Butler, The Paperboy, Precious) the immortal jazz icon known as Lady Day has been resurrected in all her glory, glamor, and grit via an incandescent, 2021 Golden-Globe winning performance for Best Actress from Andra Day (previously a musician best known for her smash hit “Rise Up”).

Both love story and exposé, we witness the triumphs and tears from behind Holiday’s eyes as Federal Narcotics Agents savagely exploit the singer’s personal demons in their effort to destroy the one woman with a voice that just couldn’t be silenced. The radical re-envisioning of history is the product of years of research on the part of screenwriter, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, Suzan-Lori Parks (who also happens to have been mentored by James Baldwin himself): “In telling this part of Billie Holiday’s story,” she remarks, following my interview with Day and Daniels, “how the United States Government came after her because she insisted on singing ‘Strange Fruit’—the truth I embraced—and the truth that I hope the viewer takes away—will provide a new way of appreciating Ms. Holiday’s legacy.”

On a Thursday evening prior to Globes weekend, I had the privilege of conversing for an hour with Day and Daniels about bringing back Billie, on what would have been the big night of their gala red-carpet premiere—but in a virtual world—well, wasn’t. Witness below this dynamic chemistry between director and his sonorous conduit, as we consider the notion of birdsong, cages, and taking flight.

Left to right: DIOR dress, STUART WEITZMAN shoes, and BVLGARI earrings and rings. PRADA sweater and pants, SALVATORE FERRAGAMO shoes, and BVLGARI watch.

Lee Daniels: Can I just tell you something, Flaunt magazine? I am in a really sad mood today.

Oh, I’m sorry.

LD: I’m in a sad mood because I cannot be with my star. I’ve never experienced this in my life. We normally have an audience, where I’m looking at her or him and they are looking at me. And we would be in a room of 2,000 plus people today. And that is not happening. It’s very weird as a filmmaker to experience that. And it’s really weird not to experience that with someone who I can’t say enough about. I just cannot say enough about Andra as an artist and as an actor. I want her to feel this, not just for me, but a little for me, but really because I’ve experienced it, and I know it. She’s experienced it as a singer, but this is different, something else that she’s never played in—a playground that she’s never played in. And so I just I’m trying not to become sad about this.

Oh my God. I feel so sad for you both.

LD: It’s very weird for me, right?

I wasn’t going to mention this, but I was actually at the premiere of The Paperboy in Cannes. So I’ve seen… how it should be today.

LD: How long ago was that?

Almost 10 years ago now—2012.

LD: Yes. And how long, how long was that standing ovation? So Andra can hear, it was like 16 minutes. 16 minutes of people—maybe 17 minutes—of just people never leaving their seat and just clapping till their hands fell off. Yeah, that is what she deserves for this. So it’s hard for me.

I definitely think you guys deserve to have a premiere.

LD: I cannot believe we’re airing our dirty laundry in front of people, Andra.

Andra Day: I know, but I feel it too. Like, I just am like ‘Ugh,’ because you know what this feels like…I don’t know. You remember being sad leaving the set, but you guys just kept encouraging me like, ‘Don’t worry, we’re gonna see each other during the premieres, during all the press, duh duh duh.’ So, when that was stripped away, I feel like it was a part of me like, ‘Damn, I can’t feel that, I can’t fill that hole now.’

LD: It’s ironic that you were there at The Paperboy… Because that is what this would have been… I just know it. I’d felt it with Precious; I know what this movie does to the audience. That’s what? That’s the gift that God has given me.

Left to right: LOUIS VUITTON suit and sweater and JIMMY CHOO shoes. DUNDAS dress, STUART WEITZMAN shoes, and BVLGARI earrings, necklace, bracelets, and rings.

LOUIS VUITTON coat, PRADA shirt, and BRUNELLO CUCINELLI pants. 

Left to right: DUNDAS dress, STUART WEITZMAN shoes, and BVLGARI earrings, necklace, bracelets, and rings. LOUIS VUITTON suit and sweater and JIMMY CHOO shoes.

And that brings us back to the subject at hand: Billie Holiday. How did each of you approach an icon like this, someone that everyone’s heard of, but that few really know?

LD: Very carefully. Very, very, very carefully. So much so that we were both questioning whether or not this was something—Andra was in particular—whether it was something she could even take on. And for me the same, just making sure we got it right. I think that came with an enormous amount of prayer, and then deep research on both of our parts, to get it right. Me, more the mood and the period and the time. For Andra, really specifically to get into character, and she can speak on that, but just making sure that we really got the tone and the spirit of Billie Holiday correct.

Andra, I think you had her nuanced persona down; equal measure chaos and charm, spirit and sass. Can you talk about how you got into that zone? How you got from you to her?

AD: Thank you, thank you for that. I mean, I have to really start by saying it starts with Lee. He would say, ‘I don’t want her to be a victim. I don’t want her to be a victim,’ because that’s all we’ve known of her. We were told that lie, that she was just a tragic drug addict, and was this waste of life, that she was this weak woman, and just let people take advantage of her. The other thing we were focused on is we had to find the humor in it. Because she was funny, people loved her, she was magnetic, they were drawn to her. She had such a boisterous personality, was a very free spirit. And then also, it is a depressing story, but the goal is not depression, but to be inspired and to be motivated and moved by this dynamic, strong, powerful Civil Rights leader. That is how Lee wanted her to be known. So it was really about capturing Lee’s brand of Billy, which was really just the truthful Billie.

Is there a personal memory either of you have of first ‘discovering’ Billie Holiday, before this film was even thought about?

AD: I was introduced to Billie Holiday through my musical theater instructor. I was like 11 or 12, I think turning 12. And I was asking for singers to study and he said, ‘You need to listen to ‘Strange Fruit’. You need to listen to Billie Holiday.’ At first, I thought it was a man he was talking about, so I was disappointed. (laughs) A song called ‘Sugar’ was my first introduction, then ‘Strange Fruit’. With ‘Sugar’, it just was really kind of jarring, the tone of her voice was so different. And I was like, ‘Wow, so this is what good singing was, back then.’ I was enamored by her voice, because it reminds me of a roller-coaster that’s rickety and old, and you feel like it’s gonna fall off the tracks, but it never does. It’s a perfect ‘out of control’ voice, all this broken-up gravel… She really changed my idea of what a great singer is. Then I heard ‘Strange Fruit’. And I knew. Though I was really young, I remember I was basically like, sixth grade; I had just started going to this performing arts school in San Diego. I didn’t know exactly what she was talking about, but I…

LD: You understood? You understood her? You loved her voice at sixth grade?

AD: Yeah, I did. I did. I liken her voice to a page-turner, a book where you’re like, ‘I have to figure out how this ends.’ Like I said, it’s like a roller coaster, where you feel it’s so unsteady. When I listened to Whitney—Whitney’s got it locked down, those notes ain’t going nowhere, honey, those notes are locked in. With Billie, it sounds like ‘Uh oh, is she going to take a dive here. Is it going to get off pitch here?’ She was virtually pitch perfect, and you never guessed that. But it was the way she would slip into another… I expected it to fall off the rails all the time. And it wasn’t until I started to study more jazz from the era, like Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, and then on to the great players Mingus, Monk, Bird, Coltrane. And I love jazz guitarists, as well: Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian. It wasn’t until then, that I realized her phrasing was so special, the way she would place everything in a song… it made me sing the way I sing now, period, because of her.

Left to right: LOUIS VUITTON suit and sweater. DUNDAS dress and BVLGARI earrings, necklace, bracelets, and rings.

I have a practical question. How did you get your actual voice like hers, as well as her spirit?

AD: I was motivated to do that. I think Lee and I knew from the gate that he was endeavoring to do this without using Billie Holiday’s voice—just didn’t feel right. You know it. It wasn’t time for that anymore. I look at her voice as casting a character in and of itself. There’s Billie, and then there’s her voice, which is its own character. But Lee connected me with dialect coach, Thom Jones, who helped me to find the place that she speaks from. I’m definitely deeper in my chest. Billie Holiday is much more in her throat, especially higher, sort of back behind her ears. We were finding it through the music, and then he asked me what resonated with me the most about her voice, and I told him that it was her laugh. Her laugh was huge… I mean Lee knows. I think he just loved her laugh ‘cause it’s just so heavy and labored, and it’s kind of like this hanging thing. She chases everything with her breath.

But is this process painful? To the untrained ear, it sounds painful.

AD: Yeah… it is painful. It definitely wears and tears on your vocal cords and on your throat. It’s just like any exercise. I think once you get used to it, you can get more comfortable with it, and starting to get more familiar, like muscle memory. But it still does take a toll. I started smoking cigarettes. I don’t drink; I started drinking alcohol, and just stopped taking care my voice. Not wearing warm stuff around my throat and not drinking hot tea. I would just drink ice water, cold gin. Being louder. Because I had to earn in a very short period of time, the voice that Billie Holiday earned, in her lifetime. If I was going to tell her story properly, I had to do it that way. Listen, I would do it all again. Honestly, the story that Lee put together, the script that Suzan-Lori Parks wrote, and Billie Holiday’s character, to me deserves that level of dedication and sacrifice. I don’t care, she’s worth it.

LD: That’s so fascinating—I mean, that’s the reason why Andra’s a great singer. Because I did not appreciate Billie for that at all. I just thought it was—I didn’t know what it was. When I heard ‘Lady Sings the Blues’, I loved Diana’s voice. I loved it, loved it, loved it, so that when I heard Billie, it was so jarring that I didn’t pick it up again until I was in my 30s, late 40s. It just sort of happened through a movie or something. And I said, ‘Who was that? I love it. Wow. Okay, that’s cool.’ I’m fascinated to hear that from Andra, because we have two different understandings of Blackness, and she’s a musician and I’m not.

AD: …I think jazz is in my DNA too. I didn’t realize until I was older that my grandfather on my mother’s side was a jazz musician. He actually knew (and had made some records with) Quincy Jones too. I just heard about him now, I never knew him. He was like, in total obscurity, never actually ‘made it.’ But I heard a CD of his music, from before he passed away, just a couple of years ago. He’s like a ghost… My mom said, ‘As much as he wasn’t a part of our lives, a love of jazz is in your DNA.’

Your production designer recreated Montreal as Jazz Age New York City so well; smoky rooms, burning candles… When you’re walking in the street in the rain, with the red neon signs in the background… there’s a romance about it. But not only the glamor, but also the grit and the sweat. And to think your maternal grandfather was in that moment, in those times.

AD: He was definitely being gritty and sweaty. For sure. (laughs)

LD: When I found out that Billie was this leader, this Civil Rights leader, I wasn’t surprised at all, because it was the essence of that you could smell. After reading the script, when you look at the time period, and you look at her face, it just makes sense; you just look at the face of somebody that was defined by those times. All the production design, all the costumes, everything, and all I can do is look at her face. You are just transported back into a time of realness, of true realness. I had to honor every picture of her, and no two pictures are alike either, by the way. Each scene is a different Billie. It’s strange. I don’t know how we did it. And that wasn’t me really intentionally trying to do it. Honestly, it was God working, because we were just honoring the past… It wasn’t intentional, planning that we had to get ‘this look’ and ’that look’ and ‘this look’ and ‘that look.’ It really was her spirit jumping into ‘that look’ that honored the past.

Left to right: Lee wears PRADA sweater and pants, SALVATORE FERRAGAMO shoes, and BVLGARI watch. Andra wears JULIEN MACDONALD dress and jumpsuit, STUART WEITZMAN shoes, and BVLGARI earrings, bracelets, and rings. 

JULIEN MACDONALD dress and BVLGARI earrings. 

Prada collaborated on nine gowns with your costume designer Paolo Nieddu, and apart from those, there are obviously hundreds of outfit changes in the film. Andra, do you have a favorite out of all those incredible, impeccable-to-the-period looks?

AD: The Prada dress that I loved most was the blue one at the end, in the dancing sequence where she and Trevante [Rhodes, who plays love-interest ‘Jimmy Fletcher’] are waltzing, well, they’re like ‘hood waltzing’. I love that dress… I love all the dresses. Every single dress that Paolo Nieddu built was just like ‘Oh!’ Lee, you remember when I had the black dress on, that black velvet one? Paolo put it on, and I’m like, ‘Child, let me say I don’t got no boobies, but this dress makes sis look like she was out here with some double D’s! I’m never taking it off! I’m never taking this off for as long as I live!’

LD: Whatever outfit Andra was in, her pitch changed. Her whole demeanor. Each one forced her to walk a certain way, to think a certain way. You know, the titties were spilling, just spilling. I’m like ‘What are they?’ (laughs)

AD: Listen, you see me nekkid in this movie, it ain’t well endowed up here, but those dresses he put together—I could barely move, barely get through the door. Those dresses of the period, those dresses were meant to accentuate and meant to just hug a woman’s body in a really beautiful way. And it’s funny ‘cause I come to set—there was a fur coat of hers that I wore all the time, that is no longer in the wardrobe ‘cause it’s at my house, but…

The big white one, or the mink?

AD: No, no, I took a more subtle one so they wouldn’t notice… I just needed a fabulous one. (laughs) But when I would walk into set in that coat, I felt different… As soon as each costume came on, it was a different performance, period.

LD: I think that my favorite gown is the one Andra wears singing ‘Lover Man’ [it’s a shimmering rose pink halter-neck]. I think that was the most stunning, she looks just like a Black Cinderella in that. I think that you understand why Billie was called ‘Lady Day’ when she’s in those gowns. It’s just like sort of ‘What the hell?’—it’s the juxtaposition of all that trouble that she was, and this stunning, beautiful gown.

What do you think Billie Holiday felt about love? Because her loves and losses have been so distorted in the historical record.

LD: I think she loved her crew, and she loved her dogs. What do you think, Andra?

AD: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that her crew, her dogs, her craft reminded her more of what she wanted the most, which was kids. When it came to love, to intimate love, I think it was… Remember, she had grown up in a brothel. She was raped at 10, sent to reform school for girls for being raped. She was sent into a brothel by her mother at such a young age, and these men would come to rape her, when she was a child… The first time she went to jail, she was 14, and it was because she wouldn’t have sex with an old man who came to have sex with a child in a brothel. She had the police come and she got arrested. At that time, there was no power for a young girl, a young Black girl. So I think ‘love’ became what she was used to there. And I don’t call it love. I don’t think Billie Holiday, though she wanted it so badly, truly felt that she was worthy of ‘love.’ Her getting smacked around, and her getting hit, beat up by her men… that’s not… For us, we would be terrified like, ‘This person is dangerous.’ But she grew up around the underworld, and that’s what she was familiar with. Which is why I think we see her struggle to really receive love from Jimmy Fletcher. He creates a vulnerability in her. Jimmy threatened to break her heart, which is the pain that sort of spiraled her into addiction… It was a very scary thing for her. I think she was terrified of really being vulnerable, and really being loved, and then losing it.

LD: You know what I like about Billie, though? I really, really understood who Billie was, and this is as the director of the film, when I really said ‘Oh wow, this is wow,’ is when Trevante, when Jimmy, came backstage, and she just lets him in. And everybody is ‘What the fuck? What are you doing? I mean, are you crazy?’ And she just looks over at him, she’s counting her money. She says, ‘It’s complicated, it’s complicated…’ She knew complication, so she understood… she knew that men weren’t shit to her. At least he’s not hitting her. ‘It’s complicated.’

PRADA sweater and pants and BVLGARI watch. 

But that’s the other complication—he’s a Fed. It’s not like you have the classic trope of the ‘undercover agent’—you made a movie with a character who’s not even pretending anymore to be undercover. He’s out. He’s completely lost his cover. In the soundtrack, you play ‘the Devil and I got up to dance… a slow dance,’ with that scene.

LD: Love her, love her for it. Listen, she’s dancing with the Devil, and she don’t give a shit.

AD: I feel like, with Jimmy… I don’t know that she’s dancing with the devil. Jimmy’s dancing directly with the Devil. That’s what I love about her, her forgiveness to just let him in. It also had to do with her seeing him truly. Yes, he was an FBI agent, but the reality is, she saw a Black man. She knew that he was actually a good person. He believes that drugs are going to destroy our community. He does not have the information that the government is pumping drugs into the community, but he remembers his father told him that drugs are going to kill us. And that’s admirable. He was just being used, and he was too naive to realize that he was being used. She saw it. He didn’t. Her love and her not holding it over his head is what actually helped him to get to the revelation that, ‘Oh shit, I’m just a pawn in this game. I put this woman in prison, and she is embracing me and accepting me and loving me. I work for these people. I got them exactly what they wanted and they rejected me, and they will never allow me to move up the ladder. I’m just a ni**** to them. To her, I’m a Black man with ambitions.’ So I think that love is actually what really helped him to understand what was happening, what they were doing to him.

That brings us to the systemic persecution of Black cultural figures. The Evan Ross character is shown working on the Federal surveillance of Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong…. And there were many, many more. So can you tell me about the title of the film, and its wider meaning?

LD: I mean, the title really could have been The United States vs. Black People… if you ask Black people… We toyed around with it a little bit. People were saying ‘Wait a minute, it’s a love story at the end of the day. Maybe we should call it ‘All Of Me,’ because Billie gave all of herself.’ But I said no, they need to understand that it was the government that took her out, that they wanted her out. So there it is. And they still want Black people out, so I think that that title is imperative. It certainly was a wake up call for me. You know, that poor woman. This woman that was just so, she was…

Persecuted?

LD: Fragile, fragile, but she was tough as nails and pure, and that they just did everything to take her down. I mean in the purest way. The way Andra is as an artist. That’s why she’s playing this role, how she gets this role so well… The similarities are uncanny. Like her, the meticulousness that goes into the detail of the work, it’s all uncanny.

Left to right: GUCCI coat and dress, LE SILLA boots, and BVLGARI earrings and rings. DUNHILL shirt.

GUCCI coat and dress, LE SILLA boots, and BVLGARI earrings and rings.

Are you out of character, or with the film being released, is Billie back?

AD: When we did pick-up shots and ADR, I wanted to stay in it to make sure I was still present for Lee, and what he was putting together. Admittedly, I was not ready to let her go. There are parts of her that I enjoyed, really, really enjoyed. I enjoyed her way, way more than I enjoy myself actually, to be honest… There’s a large chunk of me that is ‘out’ of her now, but I realized, and I will tell you… I finally watched the movie for the first time last night and I am just… I gotta tell you, it was beautiful. It was an incredible, truthful piece of art. It honored her legacy—and it fucked me up like a motherfucker. I’m my worst critic, and I will always be. I don’t think I’ll ever get to a point where I will see what other people see that I did. And you know what? I had a moment where I realized, ‘Oh I see things.’ I’m like, ‘That looks like me.’ My mother reminded me, ‘It only looks like you now. That doesn’t look anything like you four years ago, five years ago.’ That made me realize that there’s a lot of her that’s still present. Because whatever looks like ‘me,’ was only me post-Billie Holiday.

LD: I’m so happy you saw the movie finally. I was hoping that we would see it together, but after you said that, I’m just so happy that you saw it.

AD: I still want to watch it with you, you and I, you know.

LD: If we do see it tomorrow, that will be the last time… I’m never gonna see it after. You have to understand, I’m just learning who this ‘Andra’ woman is. From my perspective, this is not the woman that I met prior to the movie, like in the audition, and then she slowly became Billie, then she left, she was off with her own life. Then I was with ‘her’ for six months, seven months in the edit room, as Billie. When she comes up here on the screen, and I’m speaking now to her, this is Andra in her full and post-Billie form. I’m just saying hello to this woman.

So this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship… In the film, Billie says to the press: ‘The people that are hardest on me are my own race. I need help, not jail time.’ The concept of Black Unity has been a huge flashpoint over 2020-2021. What is ‘Black Unity’ today, and for the future, going forward?

LD: Andra, you answer. She’s so much more profound, she’s a poet.

AD: I think Black Unity today is us celebrating the multi-faceted Diaspora, is in us celebrating. We have to realize how much of our expectations, of each other, or each other’s Blackness, or our successes or failures dates back to sort of a plantation mentality. I think Black Unity means a celebration of all represented peoples in Black culture. We’re not a monolith, and I love when people say that, because it’s very true. You need to love, not just Black people, but Black men, Black women, Black queer people, LGBTQ+. You know, everybody’s Black experience. Aboriginal people. Latinx people… I think that ‘Black community’ has to do with celebrating all of the different facets that are our Blackness, and investing in each other. Take the term ‘Buy Black,’ right? It’s become a really popular hashtag type of term. It’s really saying ‘Yes, I want to support, I want to build up.’ We don’t admit that often, even in our own community, we have our own inherent suspicions of our own people. We should support our own businesses, instead of questioning something Black-owned, like, ‘Is this gonna be good quality?’

LD: Oh, that’s so sad, it’s sad.

AD: It is, and it’s funny, and we laugh about it, because the humor is a part of our culture. We’ve had to really survive with humor, but I think there is a good deal here that is serious. This suspicion that we have towards our own people sometimes, as light as it can seem, is actually a construct of a supremacist institution. I think that not judging, celebrating all of the facets of our Diaspora, of our Blackness, and supporting that, with our spirit, with our heart, with our money: that’s what’s important.

LOUIS VUITTON coat, PRADA shirt, and BRUNELLO CUCINELLI pants. 

Absolutely. And that brings me to the last question. The film opens with an onscreen text about the 1937 Anti-Lynching Act. ‘Strange Fruit’ was recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939, and since then it’s been a rally cry for Civil Rights. It’s been read out in Congress. It’s been banned. Can this movie change history, and can we get the 2020 version of what is now called ‘The Emmett Till Antilynching Act’ actually passed by the government of the United States of America?

LD: We had the virtual premiere on Wednesday. There was a caucus in the Senate. And Congresswoman Maxine Waters introduced the film and it was… it was chilling. Because you know the history that Maxine Waters has had. And, the impact that it had; this movie meant more to her than just a movie. For people that are out here in the streets that are doing this, they’re really for the cause, it wasn’t just a movie. It was a movement. I don’t know if that answers your question.

Well, the question was, basically, ‘Can this movie change history?’

LD: I think yes. I think that that’s the power of art, and that’s the power of what Billie did, what Billie’s song did, and then making sure that we doubled-down on that song with this film. With that, we honor her legacy. So I do believe that we did, by watching Maxine and several of my Black elders, and seeing the effect that it had on them. I believe, too, it will also motivate young kids today. It will educate them about who Billie Holiday was, because of Andra’s unique ability to bring a life to it that’s a little modern: this young, Black woke girl that sparkles, inside of Billie’s spirit, that they can connect to. On a subliminal, subconscious level, she can’t help but to be that. That will enable them to really go out and take a stand.

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Photographer: Kurt Iswarienko at Form Artist

Stylist for Andra Day: Wouri Vice

Stylist for Lee Daniels: Monty Jackson at A-Frame Agency

Hair: Tony Medina at His Vintage Touch

Makeup: Porsche Cooper

Manicure: Jolene Brodeur

Groomer: Hee Soo Kwon at The Rex Agency

Producer: Garett Quigley

Stylist Assistant for Andra Day: Isabella Conti

Tailor for Lee Daniels: Tatyana Sargsyan

Stylist Assistant for Lee Daniels: Haili Pue

Location: Optimist Studios, Los Angeles.