Is If Beale Street Could Talk Based on a True Story? The Answer Is Complicated

The Academy Awards category of Best Adapted Screenplay can contain many layers. Some of this year's nominees, like Can You Ever Forgive Me? and BlacKkKlansman, are based on books as well as true stories. That is not the billing, though, for the film adaptation of James Baldwin's novel If Beale Street Could Talk — the love story of Fonny, an African-American man from Harlem who is imprisoned after being falsely accused of a rape, and Tish, his pregnant girlfriend who tries to get him out.

The Academy Awards category of Best Adapted Screenplay can contain many layers. Some of this year's nominees, like Can You Ever Forgive Me? and BlacKkKlansman, are based on books as well as true stories. That is not the billing, though, for the film adaptation of James Baldwin's novel If Beale Street Could Talk — the love story of Fonny, an African-American man from Harlem who is imprisoned after being falsely accused of a rape, and Tish, his pregnant girlfriend who tries to get him out.