Andra Day To Play Wrongly Convicted Army Veteran In ‘Don’t Go Gentle’ From Deborah Riley Draper

EXCLUSIVE: Andra Day will star as a U.S. Army veteran trying to clear her name after being convicted of a crime she did not commit in Don’t Go Gentle. Len Cariou will play a retired judge who becomes involved with her case in the film, which Deborah Riley Draper writes and directs.

Alexandra Daddario, Finn Wittrock, Teyonah Parris and Lonnie Chavis also star in the movie, which Draper has reworked from Stephen Belber’s play of the same name.

Gerard Butler is a producer under his G-BASE banner, alongside Alan Siegel and Dan Kaslow. Crystine Zhang produces for Oval-5.

Set in modern-day Buffalo, Don’t Go Gentle follows Tanya Jenkins, a mother and Army medic who was honorably discharged. She refuses to let a wrongful conviction become the final word on her life and ends up being pulled into the privileged but strained world of a former judge and his family.

Cariou (Blue Bloods) is the retired judge, Lawrence Driver, whose history and sense of authority are challenged by Tanya’s presence. Chavis (This Is Us) plays Rasheed, Tanya’s teenage son, and Parris (WandaVision) is Ellen, Tanya’s half-sister. Daddario (The White Lotus) is Amelia, Lawrence’s architect daughter. Wittrock (American Horror Story) plays Ben, his troubled son.

This marks Draper’s move into writing and directing narrative features. She is known for making award-winning docs including A&E’s James Brown: Say It Loud and OWN/Discovery+’s The Legacy of Black Wall Street.

Speaking to Deadline from the Toronto set of the movie, Draper said: “Don’t Go Gentle is completely reimagined from the play, but this is still a story about place, belonging and identity. In her quest to vindicate herself after being wrongly convicted, Tanya crosses paths with a retired judge who’s dying and ultimately her family moves in with him. There is a dynamic of these families understanding who they are, their place in America, understanding what home is, what legacy is and what entitlement is.”

Day earned an Academy Award nom and won a Golden Globe for Best Actress for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lee Daniels’ The United States vs. Billie Holiday.

“Don’t Go Gentle challenges the idea that strength means suffering in silence,” she said. “What we accepted yesterday does not have to be what we accept today and Tanya exemplifies that. She is resilient and a healer. For her, every new environment and every obstacle is an opportunity to grow and improve conditions for herself, her son and her community.”

Draper added that stories about what happens to women after military service are thin on the ground. “Women veterans in America are one of the most overlooked groups because the military system wasn’t necessarily set up for them,” she said. “They come home and often they are poorly served. Andra has embodied this character in so many ways. She’s done so much research about female veterans and African American female veterans.”

Draper’s Atlanta-based label Coffee Bluff Pictures produces alongside G-BASE and Oval-5. Ashley Thornton Harrison, Tyler Levine, Cariou, Roxann Thomas Chargois, Heather Cariou are executive producers on the pic.