Parting Shot

Janelle Monáe

In a year where It seems like every facet of life Is going through a massive shift, musician and actor Janelle Monáe is front and center as a voice for that change, especially in her new film Antebellum, available on-demand on major cable and digital platforms September 18. “I want this to be a real look at the burden that Black women carry every single day to deconstruct systemic racism and to deconstruct white supremacy.” Monáe plays Veronica Henley, a successful writer trapped in a terrifying reality mirroring America’s original sin: slavery. “One of the things that this film says is that the past is not even the past.” While Monáe is best known as a Grammy-nominated music star, she hit the ground running with her first two films: Hidden Figures and Moonlight, winner of on an Oscar for Best Picture. She says she’s grateful those films were her debut. “They had a very specific perspective around the Black experience and about broadening who we can be as a people.” After Antebellum, “community and being a good citizen is what I’m focused on next,” says Monáe.

How did Antebellum come to you?

I needed to take a bath, and I was like, “Okay, let me read the script.” I found myself in the tub for about three hours. There were so many turns in the script; just when I thought I knew what kind of film it was going to be, it morphed into something else.

IN WHAT WAYS DO YOU THINK THE film REFLECTS THE CURRENT MOMENT?

It mirrors a lot of the themes we are dealing with today—systemic racism, racial injustice, micro-aggressions, white supremacy and the burden that Black women have to carry. We’re in the middle of a revolution. We’re in the middle of a reckoning. There’s never a wrong time to continue the conversation around what it means to be a Black woman living in America.

“We’re in the

HOW DO YOU THINK THE film SHOWS why it’s important to remove SYMBOLS OF THE CONFEDERACY?