Taraji P. Henson plays a single mother who feels so hopeless that she grabs a gun and does something desperate in the upcoming Tyler Perry film Straw.
Netflix released the trailer for the drama this week, showing Henson’s character as her life falls apart. She’s been evicted and has no money to buy her daughter’s medication.
“I didn’t mean to do this. Something inside of me broke,” she says just before brandishing a gun in a bank.
“I need my money to get my daughter’s medicine, she’s sick,” she tells a hostage negotiator played by Teyana Taylor.
Henson’s character says she wants to cash her check. It’s unclear why the bank is reluctant. “Nobody ever helped me!” she yells.
The cast also includes Sherri Shepherd, Rockmond Dunbar, Ashley Versher, Mike Merrill, Glynn Turman, and Sinbad in a return to the screen after he suffered a stroke in 2020.
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According to the official description for Straw: “A single mother’s world unravels in chaos as her day goes from bad to worse to catastrophic as she struggles to care for her ill daughter. Pushed to the brink by a world that seems indifferent to her existence, she’s forced to confront impossible choices in a society that offers her no safety net.”
Perry wrote, directed and co-produced the film with Tony L. Strickland, Angi Bones.
Henson first worked with the filmmaker on his 2009 movie I Can Do Bad All By Myself. She has said publicly that he was the first director to recognize her value.
“He was the first to give me a fair wage to star in his movie. And it’s because of him, not an Oscar, that I never had to take another movie project at the rock bottom,” the actress said during her commencement speech to the 2022 graduating class at her alma mater, Howard University.
Henson and Perry’s next collaboration, Straw, premieres globally June 6 on Netflix.
Watch the trailer below:
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