Movie Of The Week: Zimbabwean-born actress Solea Pfeiffer dazzles in Tyler Perry's Neflix film 'A Jazzman's Blues'

Solea Pfeiffer, a Zimbabwe-born actress, has had a breakthrough year in 2021. She was struggling financially, couch surfing between friends' apartments in New York City and submitting self-tapes for auditions when she landed a life-changing role in a Tyler Perry film. The film, A Jazzman's Blues, is a departure from Perry's typical slapstick style and tells a story of forbidden love and racism in 1940s rural Georgia.

Pfeiffer, who made her feature film debut as Leanne, a biracial young woman, found playing the character to be a transformative experience. She related to Leanne's struggle with identity as the only mixed person in her family and spent much of her young adult life trying to figure out where she belonged. Playing Leanne allowed Pfeiffer to explore the history of mixed-race people in America, a subject that she believes is not widely understood.

She never felt empowered to claim her Black identity because her mother was adopted and had no connection to her family up until a few years ago. She was alone in her experiences until Perry’s film opened her up to a whole new sense of self. "To be specifically half Black, half white in America is a polarizing and confusing experience," Pfeiffer says in an interview with whowhatwear.com. "The concept of passing isn't something that a lot of people have thought about. And that's what I love about this movie. It sheds light on an entire clandestine of American history. They had to keep [their race] to themselves and keep it a secret because their lives are on the line. I had always thought of myself as this modern person dealing with modern feelings and emotions when, in reality, people like me have existed all the time. They've just had to assimilate into one side or the other when it came to their identity. So I got to learn a history of myself and people like me." 

The impact of playing Leanne was profound for Pfeiffer, who says the experience gave her permission to take ownership of her identity. After filming wrapped, Audible approached Pfeiffer with the opportunity to produce her own show. Pfeiffer had spent much of the pandemic searching for artistic autonomy and finding her voice as a writer, and the opportunity to explore what it means to be a mixed-race person in America today felt like a natural fit. "Because the whole story is about identity and being lost in your identity and ultimately finding it and celebrating and taking ownership of that, it all tied together in this beautiful way, and both of the experiences gave me so much confidence," she says.  

Check out the trailer and head over to Netflix to watch the film.

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