FKA twigs is officially Josephine Baker, and the first look is pure Jazz Age glamour
StudioCanal and Bien ou Bien Productions have unveiled the first official image of FKA twigs as Josephine Baker, and it was worth the wait. Shown to buyers at the American Film Market this week, the still catches FKA twigs mid-performance, grinning wide as she twists toward the camera like she knows exactly who is watching.
FKA twigs is wearing a pink, beaded and fringed dress and striking one of Baker’s signature playful poses, with her hair set in the close-cropped waves the entertainer made iconic. It is a single frame, but it carries a lot of information. There is the sensual glamour, there is the mischievous physical comedy, and there is the sense that twigs understands that Baker was never just one thing on stage.
For anyone who has been following this project since the casting news dropped in May, the image lands like a promise kept. Director Maïmouna Doucouré, the filmmaker behind the controversial Cuties film and Hawa, has spent years developing this story, and the studio clearly knows it has a star worth leading with. The film is already in the middle of its shoot, so this is not a distant someday project. It is happening right now.
Casting the shapeshifter
When the casting was first announced, the internet did what the internet does and immediately started arguing. But the more you look at twigs’ career, the more the choice clicks into place. She is a Grammy winner, having taken home Best Dance/Electronic Album earlier this year for Eusexua, and she is also a trained dancer whose live shows blur the line between concert, theater, and art installation. Reinvention is basically her brand.
That matters because reinvention was Baker’s brand too. Born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis in 1906, Baker escaped brutal poverty and segregation, landed in Paris in 1925 and became one of the first truly global superstars. Two years later, she became the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture. A performer who could move, sing, joke, and command a room is a tall order to cast, and twigs has spent her whole career building those exact muscles.
This is also being billed as twigs’ first leading role on screen, following supporting turns in Mother Mary, The Crow, and The Carpenter’s Son. That is a big jump, and it is worth watching with both excitement and healthy curiosity about how she carries a full biopic.
More than the banana skirt
Baker’s life was far bigger than the spectacle she is most remembered for. She worked with the French Resistance during World War II, reportedly gathered intelligence against the Nazis for British and American services, raised a multiethnic family of twelve children she called the Rainbow Tribe, and returned to the United States in 1951 to confront the same racism she had left behind. In 2021, France honored her with a place in the Panthéon, the first Black woman to receive that distinction.
The biopic is reportedly the first major film to carry the blessing of Baker’s estate, developed with the cooperation of her sons, Jean-Claude Bouillon Baker and Brian Bouillon Baker. Previous screen versions exist, most notably the 1991 HBO movie starring Lynn Whitfield, but a theatrical feature with the family’s support promises a fresh, fuller portrait. Doucouré has said she wants to dig into Baker’s contradictions and wounds alongside her courage.
The road to release
Production began in France and is scheduled to run through Nov. 13, with additional shooting in Sofia, Bulgaria. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor has joined the cast, alongside Giuseppe Maggio and Grégory Montel, which is the kind of ensemble that suggests serious intentions. StudioCanal is handling worldwide sales and plans theatrical releases in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Benelux, Poland, Australia and New Zealand. No release date has been announced, and a US distributor has not been confirmed in the reports available so far.
One photo cannot tell us whether the movie will succeed. But it does tell us the filmmakers understand what they are working with. Baker was a woman who turned herself into a spectacle on her own terms, and then used that spotlight to fight for something bigger. If the rest of the film honors both halves of that legacy, twigs may have found the role of her career.
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