The First Queen & Slim Trailer Reveals Lena Waithe & Melina Matsoukas’s Hotly-Anticipated Collaboration

There’s a lot to be excited about here, folks. We’ve got our first look at Queen & Slim, the hotly-anticipated collaboration between Emmy-winning writer Lena Waithe and visionary director Melina Matsoukas. Scripted by Waithe, the first black woman to win an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for Aziz Ansari’s Netflix series Master of None, Queen & Slim features Get Out and Widows star Daniel Kaluuya and newcomer Jodie Turner-Smith in a story that sets them on the run from the police. They become, in effect, the black Bonnie & Clyde. The film’s first trailer reveals just how rich director Melina Matsoukas’s first feature-length film is. In a press release, Universal has described the project as a “consciousness-raising love story that confronts the staggering human toll of racism and the life-shattering price of violence.” Our first glimpse of the film speaks to this, as Kaluuya’s Slim and Turner-Smith’s Queen see their lives upended in a single, irreversible moment.

Here’s how Queen & Slim‘s synopsis reads:

While on a forgettable first date together in Ohio, a black man (Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya) and a black woman (Jodie Turner-Smith, in her first starring feature-film role), are pulled over for a minor traffic infraction. The situation escalates, with sudden and tragic results, when the man kills the police officer in self-defense. Terrified and in fear for their lives, the man, a retail employee, and the woman, a criminal defense lawyer, are forced to go on the run. But the incident is captured on video and goes viral, and the couple unwittingly becomes a symbol of trauma, terror, grief, and pain for people across the country.

As they drive, these two unlikely fugitives will discover themselves and each other in the most dire and desperate of circumstances and will forge a deep and powerful love that will reveal their shared humanity and shape the rest of their lives.

Waithe’s script is based on an original idea by author James Frey (“A Million Little Pieces”) and is Matsoukas’s feature film debut.

Queen & Slim hits theaters on November 27, 2019. Check out the first trailer here:

Featured image: (from left) Slim (Daniel Kaluuya) and Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) in Queen & Slim, directed by Melina Matsoukas. Courtesy Universal Pictures

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Bryan Abrams

Bryan Abrams is the Editor-in-chief of The Credits. He's run the site since its launch in 2012. He lives in New York.