The first trailer has dropped for the music dramedy The High Note, set to star Dakota Johnson and Tracee Ellis Ross. The former stars as Maggie, legendary singer Grace Davis’ (Ross) overworked personal assistant with aspirations of producing music. When Grace tires of simply singing her old hits, the two embark on a mission to help her release her first new album as decades.
The trailer paints the film as a pretty enjoyable time, even though a film about the struggles of a successful singer and her personal assistant does sound like the epitome of first world problems. Nisha Ganatra, who directed last year’s Late Night, a film with a similar tone, is at the helm.
The most interesting aspect of the project might be the role Ross is playing. She herself is the daughter of Diana Ross, an iconic singer much like the one portrayed in the film. She can probably draw from plenty of real-life experience from witnessing second-hand the ups and downs of a legendary musician that producers and industry execs are insisting is past her prime.
However, in an interview with EW, Ross downplayed the link to her mother: “In all honesty, none of this is taken from the world I know of being my mom’s child. The only thing is that I always had the dream of being able to sing. But this character was so beautifully and wonderfully written, and the story really has nothing to do with any of the things that I know from my mom’s experience.
Except for the fact that there’s a real humanity to this woman and she’s not a paper-thin quote-unquote diva that the world usually paints larger-than-life women as. She’s a real person. That’s the only connection that I can draw. That a woman who holds a great space in the world is actually a human with a heart, who has fears and disappointments and struggles all on her own”.
Hopefully The High Note can be the crowd-pleasing hit it’s marketed as. Ice Cube, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Zoe Chao, Eddie Izzard and Bill Pullman star alongside Johnson and Ross. The film hits cinemas Friday, May 8.
#Peace.Love.TheHighNote
