Josephine Baker conquered Paris, spied for the French Resistance and adopted 12 children from around the world. Maïmouna Doucouré’s new biopic doesn’t try to fit all of that into one movie. It starts in 1951, when the most famous Black woman in Europe came home to a country that still made her use the back door.
FKA twigs stars as Baker in “Josephine Baker,” which wraps production Nov. 13 after filming in France and Sofia, Bulgaria, according to an exclusive set report from Variety. The film is built around Baker’s 1951 return to the United States and her confrontation with segregation. Flashbacks move through her childhood in St. Louis, her rise in 1920s Paris, her World War II work with the French Resistance and her final years.
“I want to tell the story of the woman behind the icon,” Doucouré told Variety.
A Harlem built in Bulgaria
Most of the story takes place in America, but none of it was shot there. Producers turned backlots in Sofia into Harlem and Broadway. A parking lot in Saint-Denis, outside Paris, became a St. Louis street in 1918. Production designer Stéphane Rosenbaum recreated 1950s Miami with a hotel suite and LED screens. The production used about 2,400 extras.
Costume designer Emmanuelle Youchnovski said the team chose to make every costume instead of renting. The production brought in artisans connected to Chanel, embroidery workshops in India and Faubourg 22-11, an atelier linked to Schiaparelli. Yes, there is a banana skirt. “We didn’t reinvent the wheel,” Youchnovski said.
The audition that ended the search
Doucouré saw twigs early, during the London leg of casting. She still auditioned actresses in New York and Los Angeles, and every one of them had to sing, dance and play a dramatic scene. She said she cried during twigs’ audition.
The British performer had to learn French, which she did not speak, and master American accents for the role. She sings and dances Baker’s numbers herself. Doucouré said she wanted the performances to feel alive rather than imitated, without turning the film into a conventional musical.
Oscar nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor plays Baker’s mother. The cast also includes Benjamin Millepied, Alex Lutz, Giuseppe Maggio, Grégory Montel, Féodor Atkine and Harmony Raine Riley.
Everest, finally climbed
Baker’s story has resisted the screen for years. Producer Zangro, who runs Bien ou Bien Productions with Doucouré, said at least 16 production companies had tried to make this film before. He called the project “Everest.” It sat at Canal+ for more than a decade and then spent four years in development. Doucouré co-wrote the screenplay with Olivier Lorelle.
The film has the blessing of Baker’s sons, Jean-Claude Bouillon Baker and Brian Bouillon Baker, and of the Rainbow Tribe, the name Baker gave her adopted family. Doucouré researched with them directly. One son pushed back on a modern label for his mother: “My mother was a humanist,” he said.
Why this story, why now
Baker has been played before. Diana Ross put her onstage, and Lynn Whitfield won an Emmy for HBO’s 1991 film “The Josephine Baker Story.” What makes this version different is its starting point. It doesn’t open on the Folies Bergère. It opens on a woman decorated by France for her wartime service, coming home to Jim Crow and refusing to perform for segregated audiences.
That choice puts Baker’s activism, not her costume, at the center of the story. She worked alongside the civil rights movement and spoke at the March on Washington in 1963.
Studiocanal is financing the film, handling worldwide sales and distributing it in France, the U.K., Germany, Italy, the Benelux countries, Poland, Australia and New Zealand. The studio released the first image of twigs as Baker this week to buyers at the American Film Market. No U.S. distributor or release date has been announced.
