Yesterday, Sony Pictures dropped the trailer for a new movie called One of Them Days, produced by Issa Rae and starring SZA and Keke Palmer. And if the two-and-a-half-minute preview didn’t have you as excited as it had me, perhaps the monumentality of this film is lost on you – so let me break it down.

 

There are a few key ingredients that guarantee a movie is going to be a classic Black film. The first ingredient is an expert cast. And despite this being SZA’s acting debut, she gives us every reason to believe that this is not her first rodeo based on the comfort she shows us in the trailer. We see amazing and believable chemistry between her and Keke, a woman who has long proven she can get the job done. 

Beyond just the two main stars, though, Maude Apatow plays the white neighbour. Since the days of Insecure, Issa has always shown us excellent judgement when it comes to casting the token white person in a predominantly Black cast. Another star we see in the trailer is Abbott Elementary’s Janelle James. And to add to it all, comedic genius and Black acting legend Katt Williams is here, on a mission to prove that yet again, he clearly understood the assignment. 

The second ingredient for a classic Black film is writing, which we know this movie has, based not only on the fact that Syreeta Singleton, the showrunner behind Rap Sh!t, is credited, but also the plot, which leads me to the third ingredient.

 

At the heart of some of the most iconic Black films is really the storyline. Take a movie like Friday, which echoes throughout One of Them Days:

That entire movie takes place over the course of one single day and follows the wild events that unfolded within it. And it was so well executed that it turned into an entire franchise spanning four films. 

 

Even beyond just Black films, movies that take place over the course of 24 or 48 hours have worked expertly in other contexts, too, like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, or even the U.K. film Kidulthood, which follows a group of students and the trouble they get into after getting the day off following the death of one of their peers. 

While Friday and One of Them Days may have a lot in common, there is one key difference, and it’s arguably one of the main things that is bound to make this the spectacle it deserves to be. It’s that One of Them Days is told from the perspective of women. Black women. And while it deals with very realistic themes like friendship, crappy, disappointing and irresponsible boyfriends, and being short on rent, it looks hilarious. 

 

It's been a while since we’ve had a movie that centres around Black women, let alone in a comedy. Off the top of my head, the last movie I can think of that told a story about Black women through a comedic lens was Girls Trip – but that was back in 2017. It was one of very few Black, female comedies released in the 2010s, which saw the release of a lot of movies about Black trauma, like For Colored Girls, Fruitvale Station, 12 Years a Slave, Selma, Moonlight – all incredible films, but some difficult to watch.

Earlier this year, I wrote about Danielle Brooks who played Sofia in The Color Purple talking about needing physical therapy after shooting a scene and the havoc that acting had taken on her body, despite attending Juilliard. The overall tone of the piece was the sense of frustration and fatigue I was feeling over films about Black trauma. 

So a film like this is a true antidote to that, and a much-needed one, not just for me and those who perhaps share my sentiments, but more importantly, for the people who are credited with bringing the film to life.

 

In the last few years, Issa Rae and Keke Palmer have been at the forefront of Black women in Hollywood expressing an overwhelming sense of exhaustion and hopelessness. They have both endured their fair share of difficulty, though they certainly wear it well, if they wear it at all. At the start of the year, Issa spoke candidly to Pivot magazine about the lack or prioritization for Black stories, while Keke expressed considering retiring from Hollywood to Teen Vogue, and endured a very public and tumultuous breakup with her son’s dad, Darius Daulton. 

So while this may just be a film, to some it truly is a monumental one that represents a lot more than people may think. It represents the next chapter of each woman’s career, from SZA, who received tons of praise for her Harper’s Bazaar interview with Kendrick Lamar, to Syreeta Singleton, who took a hit when Rap Sh!t was dropped from Max. 

 

And for Keke and Issa, we’re seeing the follow-through on action they both committed to taking independently to address larger issues they were seeing in the landscape of Hollywood. Keke started up her digital network, KeyTV and Issa started HOORAE, her own media company. We’re seeing these women take matters into their own hands to ensure the content they want to see, and more importantly, the content they want to create has a fighting chance at seeing the light of day.