Roxane Gay’s ‘An Untamed State’ to Become a Movie Starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw

By Toni Akindele · Updated October 27, 2020

Roxane Gay nabbed her own movie! Our favorite Bad Feminist (her 2014 memoir title) announced on Twitter that she and Beyond The Lights and The Secret Life of Bees director Gina Prince-Bythewood would be co-writing the screenplay for her novel debut, An Untamed State.

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So. Some news. An Untamed State is gonna be a movie. I am co writing the script with director Gina Prince Bythewood. https://t.co/I0X39sQ3vH

— roxane gay (@rgay) March 22, 2016

p<“So. Some news. An Untamed State is gonna be a movie. I am co writing the script with director Gina Prince Bythewood.”

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Gay’s novel tells the powerful and unflinching story of a Haitian-American woman, Mireille Duval Jameson, kidnapped for ransom in front of her husband and child. The novel “explores the privilege that made her a target and the strength she must draw on to survive and reclaim her life,” as reported in Deadline.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw has been casted to star as the lead, thus completing the ultimate trifecta of Black Girl Magic.

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Gay also tweets,

To be able to tell a black woman’s story and have it directed by a black woman is a dream come true, I’ll tell you what.

— roxane gay (@rgay) March 22, 2016

“To be able to tell a black woman’s story and have it directed by a black woman is a dream come true, I’ll tell you what.”