Showtime is developing a Lena Horne limited series from her granddaughter

Deadline

The barrier-breaking late African-American singer and Civil Rights activist will be the subject of the limited series Blackbird: Lena Horne and America. Jenny Lumet, Horne's granddaughter and the daughter of director Sidney Lumet, will serve as executive producer along with Alex Kurtzman. Blackbird will tell Horne's story "from dancing at the Cotton Club when she was 16, through World War II and stardom of the MGM years, McCarthyism, the civil rights movement and her triumphant return to Broadway," per Deadline. "It will explore her relationships with Paul Robeson, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Joe Louis, Billie Holiday, Hattie McDaniel, Ava Gardner and Orson Welles and look at how she navigated stardom during Jim Crow as a direct descendant of slaves and their enslavers." Lumet says of telling her grandmother's story: "Bringing my grandmother’s story to the screen required a multi-generational effort. Grandma passed her stories to my mother, who now passes them to me, so I may pass them to the children of our family. Lena’s story is so intimate and at the same time, it’s the story of America – America at its most honest, most musical, most tragic and most joyous. It’s crucial now. Especially now. She was the love of my life.”