‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’: Taylour Paige, Jonny Coyne & More Join Denzel Washington-Produced August Wilson Adaptation

EXCLUSIVE: Taylour Paige (Zola, Jean of the Joneses, White Boy Rick), Jonny Coyne (The Nun, Nightcrawler), Jeremy Shamos (Birdman, The Big Sick), and Dusan Brown (The Lion Guard, 42) have been added to the cast of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the Denzel Washington-produced Netflix adaptation of August Wilson’s 1982 play.

They are joining previously announced Oscar winner Viola Davis, Black Panther’s Chadwick Boseman, Emmy winner Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, and Michael Potts. George C. Wolfe, the director behind the Emmy nominated miniseries, Lackawanna Blues, and the Oprah Winfrey-starring HBO movie, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is directing this project.

Ruben Santiago-Hudson adapted the screenplay which follows Ma Rainey, the “Mother of the Blues,” and the tensions that boil over between her white agent, her producer, and her bandmates while making a record in a studio in Chicago, 1927.

The play opened at Broadway’s Cort Theatre in October 1984 and earned a Tony nomination as well as a New York Drama Critics Circle Award that same year. The play was revived in ’03 with Whoopi Goldberg and original cast member Charles S. Dutton starring.

Todd Black and Dany Wolf will produce alongside Washington while Constanza Romero serves as executive producer.

Filming is scheduled to begin next month in Pittsburgh.

Paige is repped by CAA, Grandview, and Gray Krauss Sandler Des Rochers.