When she started preparing for the National Geographic series “Genius: Aretha”, showrunner Suzan-Lori Parks did what we usually do before tackling a biography project: She sold out. His approach was somewhat unusual, however.
“I spent months and months reading about what she said, and also watching what she didn’t say,” Parks said of singer, songwriter and activist Aretha Franklin in a video conversation last month. “Jazz musicians will remind us that music is not just the notes, it is the material between the notes, the silences.”
And there were many of the two during Franklin’s extraordinary life – the focus of the third season of “Genius”, which opens on March 21 with British actress and singer Cynthia Erivo in the title role. For Parks, this represented an opportunity and a challenge: Franklin struggled to control his public persona, which did not seem to be a high priority for the themes of the previous two seasons of “Genius”, Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso, whose behavior at times less than stellar may even have increased its mystique.
But for Franklin, a black woman who came to stardom amid the Civil Rights conflagrations in the 1960s, the stakes were different.
“I think she really wanted to be seen in a certain way,” said Parks. “As a black American people, we are very aware of our commercialization and, as black American artists, we are perhaps even more aware of our commercialization.”
“My challenge,” she added, “was: ‘How can I tell the truth about this black American woman who is a brilliant icon? And how can I tell the truth and be respectful? ‘”
There was certainly a wealth of material, given Franklin’s decades in the spotlight as one of the most famous singers in the world. Franklin made his first album at 14, signed with Columbia Records at 18 and recorded and performed well at 70, winning 18 competitive Grammies, a National Arts Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. When she died in 2018, at the age of 76, she sold tens of millions of records, scored 20 R&B hits on the. 1 and was the first woman included in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Erivo, who won Tony, Grammy and Daytime Emmy for his role in the musical version of “The Color Purple”, was tasked not only with portraying the woman whose indisputable nickname was “the Queen of Soul”, but also singing like her – Erivo performed vocals for Franklin’s tracks. She tried to see the bigger picture.
“I was more interested in telling the story as truthfully as possible, rather than imitating it,” said Erivo in a video call last month – although his interpretations are also frighteningly punctual.
“I would like to know, ‘Where are we now? What is this coming out of or what are we getting into? How does it feel here? ‘”, She added. Erivo and a vocal coach would begin by trying to zoom in on the finer details of Franklin’s technical virtuosity and his subtle emotional inflections.
“Then you never mind,” Erivo continued. “Nobody wants to see someone sing analytically. Nobody wants to see someone taking notes. You learn them, you understand them, and then you let that go so that there is the freedom to just move through you. “
For Parks, the focus on the truth in a series called “Genius” started with reflections on the meaning of the word and what it implies. She received this label herself, having received a MacArthur scholarship – known as the “genius award” – for her dramaturgy. She was the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama for “Dominator / Underdog”, and recently wrote the script for the movie “The United States vs. Billie Holiday”.
Making the series was an opportunity, she said, “to talk about Aretha Franklin’s genius, specifically, and what black female genius can look like.” An important aspect was Franklin’s ability to build bridges, especially during the Civil Rights era, often alongside Martin Luther King Jr., played by Ethan Henry. (King is the subject of the next season of “Genius”.)
Another, which Parks claimed to be among Franklin’s most distinguished achievements, was the way she “turned her pain into sonic gold”.
Parks said he relied on “mountains of research” to portray the biographical elements of this alchemy, alternating between Franklin’s adult life and his teenage past. At the center of the story is Franklin’s father, Rev. CL Franklin (Courtney B. Vance), with whom the young Aretha (played by Shaian Jordan) had an intimate but complex relationship. The leader of the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, CL was a celebrity in his own right and went on smoothly to indulge in earthly delights on Saturdays to preach heavenly sermons on Sundays.
Aretha was 6 years old when her mother, a gospel singer and pianist, left CL because of her infidelities. (She died four years later.) Left in charge, CL nurtured his daughter’s talent and began taking her on turbulent gospel journeys since she was 12 years old. The reverend might be domineering, but he loved his daughter, whom he affectionately called Little Re, and was supportive; in the series, he surrounds enviable models, including singer Dinah Washington and jazz pianist Art Tatum.
Still, life as the daughter of a charismatic pastor on the road can be difficult. Little Re had two of her four children when she was 15.
“I think it would be a mess if I had a child while I do all the things I’m doing now,” said Erivo. “I don’t know how she did it, because I don’t think she would ever do anything in half.”
The series is not intimidated by less interesting details from Franklin’s biography, including difficult relationships and the impact his ambitions sometimes had on loved ones. Her first husband and manager, Ted White (Malcolm Barrett), is portrayed as petty, incompetent and physically abusive. Her sister Carolyn (Rebecca Naomi Jones), another talented songwriter and performer, gets into a heated dispute with Aretha after Aretha steals some promising material.
Getting to the bottom of Franklin’s life is often difficult. She left so many things out of her autobiography, “From These Roots”, that a frustrated David Ritz, who had been hired to help write it, went on to write the much more detailed and revealing biography “Respect”. She condemned it as “a very trashy book”. An equally controversial episode involving a Time cover story is staged on the show: When the article is published, she feels betrayed by the journalist and his sources – including her own husband.
Attempts to get Franklin on the screen were also complicated. Franklin sued several times to block the release of Sydney Pollack’s documentary “Amazing Grace”, which chronicled the recording of his electrifying 1972 double-platinum gospel album of the same name before a live audience at a Baptist church in Los Angeles. (Asked after his wide theatrical release in 2019 why he thought Aretha didn’t like the film, Chuck Rainey, the bass player for “Amazing Grace”, said he believed the film was very focused on the style and celebrities of the audience, including his father and singer Clara Ward. “It was like she was wallpaper,” he said.)
A continuous and public rivalry between Franklin’s heirs has continued to muddy the waters since his death. Earlier this year, his son Kecalf Franklin said on Instagram that “Genius” was not supported by the family. (He also attacked MGM for his long-delayed biopic, “Respect”, scheduled for August, for which Aretha chose Jennifer Hudson to star.)
However, Brian Grazer, executive producer of “Genius”, said that before filming began, the production received an endorsement of Aretha Franklin’s assets through her curator at the time, Sabrina Owens, the singer’s niece. “We had the property 100 percent on board, and the property manager gave it to us,” he said. (Owens, who resigned as trustee last year, referred the questions to the estate’s current attorney, who did not respond to several requests for comment.)
For all these reasons, however, there is music, which is the central and perhaps the most memorable element of the series – appropriately, given Franklin’s oversized influence on modern music.
“She was able to redistribute the melisma by giving us these testimonies about black femininity, about black humanity within the context of the soul-music genre,” said Daphne A. Brooks, author of “Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound ”and professor of African American studies at Yale. “This has transformed the pop music scene: we now have a kind of standard form of pop singing that comes from Aretha Franklin.”
As such, many of the most illuminating scenes in “Genius” do not deal with Franklin’s private life, but in the way the musician, often shy and soft-spoken, has shaped his own work.
“When you start to know what it takes to hit, to be in a recording studio, to work with musicians who, in the case of Muscle Shoals, are all white men in 1967 – that’s huge, brilliant triumph for her, ”said Parks.
The full scale of Franklin’s contributions to his own music has long been obscured. She was a talented songwriter and an excellent pianist. In the studio, she was a supervisor, pushing herself and her collaborators until they captured the exact sound she heard in her head – which was not easy for a black musician of her time. In the series, we see that she needs to ask to be credited as a producer for her best-selling album, “Amazing Grace”, whose making of receives an entire episode.
“I knew right away when I started this project that this would be the place where the magic would happen,” said Parks. “The story of ‘Amazing Grace’ revolves around something that, again, has not been told. Watching the documentary, which is beautiful, I wanted to know the story behind it. “
“Amazing Grace” is pure gospel, which was Franklin’s emotional and spiritual anchor. But the show also demonstrates its unusual fluency in most of the dominant genres of its time, including jazz, blues, Tin Pan Alley, funk and pop – “Aretha is black, female, American”Said Parks, laughing. In his music, as in his activism, Franklin tried to reach as many people as possible. It clearly worked.
“This is, in my opinion, a black genius thing,” Parks said. “It brought people together for a greater good.”