The drug war tar­gets a star in The Unit­ed States vs Bil­lie Holiday

On 16 May, 1947, Bil­lie Hol­i­day was arrest­ed in her own apart­ment on the charge of nar­cot­ic pos­ses­sion. It was the cul­mi­na­tion of a fed­er­al sting prey­ing upon her open-secret depen­den­cy on hero­in, an oper­a­tion made pos­si­ble through unsa­vory sub­terfuge that involved an agent con­duct­ing a love affair of ques­tion­able ethics with the singer.

This nasty episode in the life of a leg­end forms the basis for the new film The Unit­ed States vs Bil­lie Hol­i­day, for which the first trail­er has sur­faced just today. The title sets the dra­mat­ic terms of this unfair­ly stacked con­flict, with one out­spo­ken, trou­bled woman of col­or fac­ing the col­lec­tive might of the Amer­i­can government.

The lead role is filled by Andra Day, the pow­er­ful alto behind the sin­gle ​‘Rise Up’, mak­ing her screen act­ing debut with a char­ac­ter that puts her pipes through their paces. She’s joined by Tre­vante Rhodes as Jim­my Fletch­er, the G‑man who infil­trat­ed her life, as well as Natasha Lyonne as the wan­ton-liv­ing screen idol Tal­lu­lah Bankhead, and Gar­rett Hed­lund as nar­cotics bureau chief Har­ry Anslinger.

The most curi­ous name attached to the project may be that of direc­tor Lee Daniels, return­ing to fea­tures for the first time since 2013’s The But­ler. He’s been kept busy in the world of TV with his pop­u­lar soap opera Empire, and now he’s ready to tack­le anoth­er sto­ry about a self-pos­sessed woman who wouldn’t let any amount of adver­si­ty hold her back.

The trail­er goes heavy on Day’s singing as Hol­i­day, not quite an impres­sion while still imbued with the throat­i­ness unique to her famed ren­di­tion of ​‘Strange Fruit’, which we can hear on the sound­track. If Jen­nifer Hud­son could get an Oscar for singing her way through Dream­girls, a sim­i­lar feat seems well with­in reach for the lady Day as Lady Day.

The Unit­ed States vs Bil­lie Hol­i­day comes to Hulu in the US on 26 February.