...Aretha, Something He Can FEEL

Queen of soul AND fashion.

Off topic, but is anyone watching the Genius: Aretha? I'm three episodes in and it's SO boring. Her life, or at least they are depicting, just isn't as interesting as Einstein's or Picasso's.

R2 I can’t believe it’s boring! I figured the reason Aretha Franklin’s family was boycotting the NatGeo version is because it would depict the salacious aspects of her backstory.

The problem with Aretha's story is that she was so secretive about her private life until the very end that any biopic would need to either be based on rumors and gossip or, worse still, use the bullshit Re Re tried to peddle in her "From These Roots" autobio.

I found it fascinating especially about he father. I love Cynthia Erivo and the reason he family trashed it is because they are heavily invested in the Jennifer Hudson one and feel like this will compete. They are ridiculous. And her pimp husband and her deceit with her sisters was all out there. The one thing they left out is that she caught Glynn Turman in bed with another man. Yes. He is Gay. They really exposed her father. And James Cleveland was Gay.

I can understand them not outing Turman, he's still alive.

The other stuff....they were never gonna drag her like that. Both of the bio films/series will be shit as a result. Just a lot of icon fluffing.

Cynthia Erivo has zero charisma. I never once felt she captured the essence of what made Aretha Franklin phenomenal back in the 60s and 70s. I've had this problem with her in previous films like Harriet where she delivers this bug-eyed, mumbling, sleepwalking performances. Like with Harriet, you never get the sense of Aretha's personality, her ticks, her quirks. And while Erivo's singing is nice, it comes off as karaoke imitation of Aretha. She simply doesn't have the resonance and power that made Aretha great. She does a nice mimicry of Aretha's phrasing, but it never sounds authentic.

And the script is a mess (much like The United States vs Billie Holiday, both written by Suzan-Lori Parks). It has a lot of anachronistic Twitter/Tumblr discourse throughout in its desperation to pander to the Woke audience. And while I admire the fact that it delved deeper into Aretha's background and exposing all the dirty laundry of her lauded father, it still felt sensationalistic and agenda-driven (it's no surprised Wendy Williams loved the series).

While I'm sure the JenHud version will be sanitized, I hope she gives us a more earthy Aretha than Cynthia Erivo .

IMO, the only person who could authentically convey the hot mess Aretha was is Fantasia. But when The Queen herself thought Halle Berry was a proper choice, hey...

Aretha did a duet with Fantasia and Fantasia adored her, but Oscar winner Hudson was considered more bankable.

I shudder to think of the dim bulb Jennifer Hudson playing the American treasure, Aretha Franklin.

Her father impregnated a 12 yea old! Damn. That's gross. And he took Aretha with him when she was 12, and she got pregnant too.

I think Erivo and Courtney Vance give terrific performances in the Genius series but the script is awful and the timeline is all over the place.

Agree. And Courtney Vance in particular, was outstanding. Saw a photo of the real C.L. Franklin. He looks slimy.

I feel Courtney Vance brought his A-game to the series, but Erivo's performance was lackluster.

Forrest Whitaker will be playing him in the movie and he looks more like C.L. Franklin. It's too bad we'll get the cleaned up version of him in the upcoming film.

No. Actually while I think Forrest Whitaker is a great actor, he is wrong for C.L. Franklin. Courtney captured his coarseness, his bombast, and his promiscuity, and the slime much better. Now, Andre Braugher, or Sterling K. Brown from This is Us, or James McDaniel would have been vey good as C.L. too. But not Whitaker. Again, they were going for the Oscar bait when they cast the movie with JHud.

Vance also conveyed how scary C.L. could be to his kids. He was overbearing, but there was always menace underlying.

R17, Whitaker is all wrong for C.L. Franklin because the movie will give us a very sanitized version of him and not the real him like in Genius. But I do believe he could be just as believable as a pulpit pimp as Courtney Vance.

However, Courtney Vance is the highlight of the series, no doubt. He also got C.L. Franklin's cadence down.

Does the Nat Geo version address the allegations regarding the paternity of Aretha's oldest son and her middle son?

Yes. It was inferred that it happened at one of the tent revivals and probably a musician. But he was never named in the movie. So I guess the point they made was that she was not safe on the road. I've read several articles about this, and a boy she was close to at school, Donald Burk was named as the father of her first, and Edward Jordan was the father of the second. He was also a boy from school.

There was a scene in the movie with Courtney Vance telling her teacher that no matter how smart she was, she had a special gift, God wanted he to sing, and he pulled her out of school right about the time she may have been pregnant with #2. For a while there were whispers that her father was the father of her first and second. But that was probably because he fathered a child with a 12 y. old. That was also in the movie. When his wife found out, it was the final straw. She left his filthy ass.

[quote]It was inferred that it happened at one of the tent revivals and probably a musician.

Oh, dear.

Aretha also had a son with Ted White, her husband, and a son with Ken Cunningham, her road manager, after she divorced White. T.I. played a Harlem businessman she was going with in the movie, and he sort of evolved into her manager. Interestingly, she had a long-standing affair with Jesse Jackson but it was never mentioned. I wonder if Jesse will make an appearance in the Jennifer Hudson version.