StudioCanal and Bien ou Bien Productions have unveiled the first official image of FKA Twigs as Josephine Baker in Maïmouna Doucouré’s buzzy upcoming biopic, giving buyers at the American Film Market an early glimpse of the star’s uncanny transformation into the Jazz Age icon. (See the image below)
Released Wednesday, the still shows Twigs striking one of Baker’s classic playful poses atop a dining table in a pink, beaded and fringed dress, her hair styled in the singer’s signature close-cropped waves.
Twigs’ flair for theatrical reinvention makes her an inspired fit for Baker, whose performances fused sensual glamour with a mischievous physical wit. The image captures some of that combination, with Twigs flashing a broad smile as she twists toward her audience.
FKA Twigs as Josephine Baker.
Manuel Moutier
Written by Doucouré (Cuties, Hawa) with Olivier Lorelle, Josephine Baker will follow its subject’s rise to international stardom in 1920s Paris and her subsequent work with the French Resistance and the American civil rights movement.
Born in St. Louis in 1906, Baker moved to Paris in 1925 and became one of the defining entertainers of the Jazz Age. Her later activism included appearing alongside Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington. In 2021, she became the first Black woman inducted into France’s Panthéon.
“I cannot wait to embody Josephine Baker, bringing her fight, her love, her losses, her talent and her heroism to the big screen,” Twigs said when her casting was announced in May. “She lives on in our hearts as a visionary, ground-breaking woman whose story is as powerful as it is relevant today.”
The project has the support of Baker’s sons Jean-Claude Bouillon Baker and Brian Bouillon Baker, along with the Rainbow Tribe, the multiracial family of 12 children she raised at her château in southwest France.
Twigs won her first Grammy in February, taking best dance/electronic album for Eusexua. Her prior screen credits include Alma Har’el’s Honey Boy, Rupert Sanders’ The Crow and David Lowery’s Mother Mary, opposite Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel.
StudioCanal and Bien ou Bien Productions are producing, with CPB Films, Leyland Films and Dingie as associated producers. StudioCanal is handling worldwide sales at AFM and will release the film theatrically in France, the U.K., Germany, Italy, Benelux, Poland, Australia and New Zealand.
