Nina simone biography netflix account

What emerges is a striking account of an artist besieged by her own rage, striving for freedom in society, her marriage, and her music. Nina was someone who was quite misunderstood her whole life. She was known as violent, or difficult, or a prima donna. Once you begin to unpack those, you get into not only the social perceptions, how those terms and ideas are coded by both gender and race, but also the complexity of her psychology.

You understand what made her react in any moment in the way that she did.

What happened to nina simone

He was a genius, but he suffered from mental illness, and those judgments that we make of people are so generally superficial. I would argue that Marilyn was incredibly strong and brave and boundary-busting. They were rejected and shunned for it. I think there are those devotees, those fans who loved to go to a Nina show, they loved the energy and the tension and the confrontation of it, but there are many, in the sense of a commercial point of view, who were actually quite turned off.

She paid a big price for it. I think perhaps today, or posthumously, we can fetishize those aspects of her career.