Janelle Monae Almost Walked Away from Is God Is

Amazon and MGM are teaming up for a pretty wild ride at the movies this May: Is God Is hits theaters mid-month, and if you haven’t heard of it yet, let me fill you in. This isn’t a reboot or a franchise flick. Instead, it’s an adaptation of Aleshea Harris’s deep-dive revenge play from 2018, sliding from the Off-Broadway stage to the big screen—with Harris herself back in the director’s chair, still the brains behind the script. The basics: it’s about twin sisters with severe burn scars who get a ‘kill your father’ order from their bedridden mom. Not exactly your standard Saturday night popcorn fare.

If that’s not enough to get your attention, check out the cast. Kara Young (you might recognize her name from theater awards season) and Mallori Johnson—newer to film—play the haunted sisters, Racine and Anaia. Then there’s Janelle Monáe, who’s basically unstoppable right now: Grammy notches, Hidden Figures, Glass Onion, and now one of her darkest on-screen roles as a character named Angie. Total curveball: she almost turned it down.

The Role Janelle Monáe Almost Said No To

Monáe sat down with MovieWeb and actually got pretty honest about her split-second decision to almost walk away from this gig. If you see her in the trailers, it almost looks like it was tailor-made for her, but according to her, it was more complicated. She was blown away by the script—she says it’s 'one of the best scripts I’ve ever read in my life. Like, I’m crying, laughing, I was in the movie.' Still, she hesitated. The role hit close to home, touching on a lot of trauma she’d seen in women around her. And she wasn’t sure she’d be able to do it justice.

'I think that when I was asked to be Angie, I almost did not accept it. It was a yes, because the script was so amazing, but I was like...I understood her, but also, I felt so many women in my life had gone through what she had been through.'

If you’re keeping count, that’s not just an actor randomly picking projects. There’s an actual weight to why she said yes.

A Different Kind of Character for Monáe

Monáe’s played everything from historical NASA genius to murder mystery suspect, but Angie is uncharted territory. The movie lands right at the intersection of trauma, vengeance, and family messiness. We get a woman who’s spent years trapped—raising kids, enduring a monstrous husband, never once putting herself first. Monáe told MovieWeb that Angie finally makes the call to get out:

'I had never played a part where there was a woman who had held space for wanting to escape, but also being sort of complicit in a sense, where she’s with this monster. We meet her at a great time when she’s making a decision to leave. I think that seeing a Black woman, a mother, somebody who has given so much of herself to raising her kids and to being the wife that he wants her to be, this is a moment where we see her bravery, we see her fearlessness, and we see her really standing up for Angie, and I’m never going to turn down an opportunity to show that.'

In other words: this role’s not just darker for her, it’s risky and personal. Not every megastar would sign up for that.

The Who’s Who Behind Is God Is

• Kara Young: Racine (one half of the burned-twin duo)
• Mallori Johnson: Anaia (the other twin)
• Janelle Monáe: Angie (the mother with her own hell to escape)
• Aleshea Harris: Writer and director, both of stage and screen versions

It’s honestly not every day a playwright gets handed the director keys to her first film. Harris has made sure her vision doesn’t get watered down in the leap from theater to cinema.

So, if you’re in the mood for something gutsy—and maybe a little unsettling—mark the calendar for May 15, 2026. With this cast and that source material, Is God Is feels like one of those 'how did this get greenlit?' passion projects that doesn’t come along that often. Count me in.