Florence Jackson — Mary J. Blige in Mudbound (2017)
- MaryJBligeFashionbook
- Jun 6, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: May 19
Florence Jackson — Mary J. Blige in Mudbound (2017)
Film: Mudbound | Director: Dee Rees | Year: 2017 | Netflix Original | Co-Stars: Carey Mulligan, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell, Garrett Hedlund
This is the one. This is the role that made the world stop and pay attention. If you follow this site you already know how I feel about Mary's acting career. But even I have to say that Mudbound is in a category by itself. Florence Jackson is not just Mary's best performance. Florence Jackson is one of the greatest performances by any actress in recent cinema history.
About Mudbound
Mudbound is a 2017 period drama directed by Dee Rees and based on Hillary Jordan's novel of the same name. It is set in rural Mississippi in the 1940s and follows two families, one white and one Black, whose lives intersect on a farm in the aftermath of World War II. The film is about racism, trauma, survival, and the specific cruelty of the American South during the Jim Crow era.
Dee Rees became the first Black female director to have a film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. And her film gave Mary J. Blige the greatest dramatic challenge of her career.
Who Is Florence Jackson?
Florence Jackson is a Black sharecropper's wife living and working on the same land as a white family in 1940s Mississippi. She is strong, spiritual, and quietly extraordinary. She has survived things that would break most people and she keeps going not because things are easy but because she has no other choice and because the people she loves need her to.
Florence does not have grand speeches or dramatic moments designed to win awards. What she has is presence. Truth. Humanity. The kind of acting where you forget you are watching a performance and start believing you are watching a real person live their life.
The Oscar Nomination — A Historic Moment
Mary J. Blige received two Academy Award nominations for Mudbound: Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Florence Jackson, and Best Original Song for Mighty River, which she cowrote and performed. She became the first person in Oscar history to receive acting and songwriting nominations in the same year for the same film.
Let me say that again. THE FIRST PERSON IN OSCAR HISTORY. That is not a small thing. That is a monumental achievement. And she did it on her first major film in a leading dramatic role where she was not playing a version of herself or a music-adjacent character. She did it playing a sharecropper's wife in 1940s Mississippi.
What This Performance Means
Mudbound proved everything I have been saying on this site since day one. Mary J. Blige is not just a music legend who also acts. She is a legitimately great dramatic actress. Florence Jackson lives in you after you watch this film. She stays with you. And that is the mark of a truly extraordinary performance from a truly extraordinary artist.
If you have not watched Mudbound please do so today. It is on Netflix. Clear your schedule. Have tissues nearby. You will not regret it.
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📖 Shop Related: Mudbound Screenplay — available on Amazon
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