“They say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me / Sure got to prove it on me / Went out last night with a crowd of my friends / They must’ve been women, ’cause I don’t like no men,” Ma Rainey declares in “Prove It on Me Blues.” That 1928 tune isn’t performed in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the new film based on August Wilson’s 1982 play that premiered Friday on Netflix. But Viola Davis, who is deeply familiar with Wilson’s oeuvre — she won an Oscar for her role in the 2016 film based on his play Fences — quotes that song in revealing how she leaned into Rainey's unapologetic queerness. As Rainey, Davis oozes with sexuality, not only in the opening scenes when she’s flanked by writhing women onstage, or in scenes where she holds her girlfriend Dussie Mae from behind — but with every wave of her fan, each note she belts, and every chug of her ice-cold Coca-Cola.
“In researching Ma Rainey, she was unapologetic about her sexuality,” Davis tells The Advocate. “This is a woman who went to orgies. She was arrested at an orgy. I felt like Ma always had a woman with her. A lot of the women who dance with her were her women. She had orgies with them. That was her world. I didn't want to sweep it under the rug.”
At 19, Davis was first introduced to Rainey when she took in a production of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, R.I., with Barbara Meek in the titular role.
“Barbara Meek was the actress, for me. I just felt like she was transformative. She was great. She was all those reasons why I studied acting,” Davis says.
“What struck me is from the moment she came on the stage, [Rainey] knew her worth. I did not see a woman who had to scream for it, yell for it, whatever. She just absolutely took the space without out apology. And I loved it,” Davis says. “My heart pounded. I thought it was fantastic. That was my introduction to Ma.”
https://www.advocate.com/film/2020/1...e-black-bottom