The ghost of her highness Nina Simone is not even with Zoe Saldana right now.
Okay, it’s the official Twitter account for Nina Simone’s estate, but that’s how to troll. Damn.
Saldana has been in—pardon my Portuguese—deep fucking shit with the estate more or less since 2012, when she was first cast as the musician and activist in Nina, a biopic centered around Simone’s relationship with her manager, Clifton Henderson.
Simone’s daughter, who also goes by Simone, has been quoted with saying she’s not super happy about the entire enterprise. To make it even worse, Saldana noticeably wears a prosthetic nose, a textured wig, and dark makeup, (i.e., what can easily be considered a modern version of blackface) in a movie almost exclusively made by white people.
The tweet was sent only one day after the trailer and poster for Nina were revealed on March 1 — and the whole thing looks a bit, well, “questionable.”
The quote Saldana referenced in her original tweet is considered one of the musician and activist’s most famous quotes. The line was heavily featured in the doc What Happened, Miss Simone?
The film was nominated for a 2016 Oscar, but lost out to Amy, a documentary about the British singer Amy Winehouse, who passed away in 2011.
Contact the author at jamie.reich@jezebel.com.
Image via Getty.