FKA Twigs to Play Josephine Baker in Maimouna Doucouré Biopic Set to Shoot This Fall

FKA Twigs is moving into what looks like her most demanding screen role yet. Later this year, she is set to begin filming a biopic about Josephine Baker, the Jazz Age icon whose life moved from music-hall fame to wartime espionage and civil rights politics. The untitled film comes from Cuties and Hawa director Maimouna Doucouré, who is writing and directing the project for Studiocanal, with sales underway at the Cannes Film Festival, which opens Tuesday, May 12, and runs through May 23.

Twigs, born Tahliah Debrett Barnett, addressed the casting in a statement quoted by Variety, calling the opportunity an honor and framing Baker as a figure whose influence still lands hard now. “Josephine Baker’s extraordinary legacy is such an inspiration to me and to so many people around the world,” she said. “She lives on in our hearts as a visionary, groundbreaking woman whose story is as powerful as it is relevant today. I cannot wait to embody Josephine Baker bringing her fight, her love, her losses, her talent and her heroism to the big screen.”

Doucouré is producing through Bien Ou Bien Prods., and the film is being developed with the support of Baker’s sons, Jean-Claude Bouillon Baker and Brian Bouillon Baker, along with the rest of the Rainbow Tribe. Studiocanal is expected to handle theatrical release in its territories, including the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Benelux, Poland, Australia and New Zealand. There was no word at press time on North American distribution.

It’s a casting choice that makes sense on paper and feels pointed in a broader industry context. Twigs is already in theaters in the Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel musical drama Mother Mary, but Baker is a much larger historical assignment: St. Louis-born, made famous in France, and the first Black woman to star in a major movie, the 1927 silent film Siren of the Tropics. Baker’s image was inseparable from performance, but so was her political life. She served as a French Resistance spy during World War II, smuggling coded messages to France hidden inside her lyrics, and later became the only female speaker at the 1968 Poor People’s March for civil rights in Washington, D.C.

“Josephine Baker has lived with me for years. Working on this film, I realize how modern, fearless and complex she was,” Doucouré said. “Beyond the legend, I want to explore her contradictions, her wounds and her immense courage, as well as her relentless fight for dignity. With the extraordinary FKA Twigs bringing her rare artistry, intelligence and emotional depth to the role, it is a huge honor to work with Studiocanal to bring Josephine’s story to the screen for a global audience: the story of a woman who never stopped reinventing herself and fighting for justice and equality.”

Baker, nicknamed “Black Venus,” stepped away from the stage at points to raise what she called her “Rainbow Tribe” of 12 adopted children from different countries and backgrounds. She died in April 1975 at 68, shortly after a performance at the Bobino Theater in Paris. It’s a life that has attracted reverence and revision in equal measure for decades, and one that now lands with a different kind of urgency in Twigs’ hands, especially as her own career continues to stretch beyond music. She released her fourth studio album, Eusexua: Afterglow, in November.