Fall Preview
I
THE REVELATION:
JODIE TURNER-SMITHn 2009, British actress Jodie Turner-Smith was on
a corporate conveyor belt, sliding toward a career in
(surprise!) banking. She’d just graduated from the
University of Pittsburgh, armed with a finance degree
and an entry-level job. But at mixers, when her colleagues
raised their glasses to 30 years at the company, “a little part
of me was dying inside,” she says. She quit the gig, and
honestly, lucky us. Because this Thanksgiving weekend,
she stars in the hotly anticipated Queen & Slim, the first
feature-length film from Emmy-winning screenwriter
Lena Waithe and director Melina Matsoukas (Beyoncé’s
Formation video). When the titular characters (Turner-
Smith and Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya) are pulled over by a
white policeman, the cop ends up dead, and the duo goes
on the run. “This is a fantasy story in many ways, the idea
of black people getting away with [murder] for even one
minute,” she says. “But it’s also about the reality of black
trauma.”—BRIANNA KOVANMOVIESTURNER-SMITH: FRANKIE MARK.