The War and Treaty’s Tanya Trotter and Michael Trotter Jr.’s real-life romance is about to become a major motion picture. (photo: Sophia Matinazad)
Twenty years ago, Michael Trotter Jr., a U.S. Army veteran and one-half of married Americana duo the War and Treaty, nearly competed on American Idol. “I tell this story all the time,” he says, speaking backstage after the War and Treaty’s Idol Season 23 finale performance with top five contestant Thunderstorm Artis.
“In 2005, when I came home from Iraq, they were doing a thing called ‘Military Idol,’ and I competed in my station, which was Baumholder, Germany, and won. But because of my weight, I was disqualified in the United States, and the incentive for that was you would win that and go and compete on American Idol. I never was able to go and compete, but look at how God works.”
And now, Michael and his bandmate and soulmate, Tanya Trotter, are moving from Idol’s TV screen to the big screen, with an eponymous biopic based on their unique love story. Tanya says the movie, produced by Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. and John Legend’s Get Lifted Film Co., will feature newly penned original music (so, hopefully, the Trotters can add a Best Song Oscar nomination to their long list of accolades) and is “currently casting.”
Michael then jokes, “I think the obvious choice to play me, when you look at me, especially from the side profile, I believe Tom Cruise would be a perfect candidate. Or Brad Pitt — but he needs to work on it a little bit more. He doesn’t have enough six-pack on the side. Neither does Tom, but I can help him with that.”
More seriously, The War and Treaty biopic will have a lot of heavy material to draw from. Michael, who served in the Army from 2003 to 2007, embarked on his musical career in a completely stranger-than-fiction way. While he was on one of his two tours of duty in Iraq and his unit was encamped in one of Saddam Hussein’s private palaces, he discovered a damaged piano in palace’s basement. His company commander, Captain Robert Scheetz, knowing that Michael was a huge music fan, encouraged Michael to take up music to help cope with the stress of living in a combat zone, and Michael taught himself how to play. After Scheetz was killed on a mission, Michael wrote his first song and performed it at Scheetz’s memorial service, which led to other original memorial performances for other fallen soldiers, and eventually the “Military Idol” opportunity.
Michael met his future wife — an actress and R&B artist formerly known as Tanya Blount, who he’d crushed on since seeing her sing “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” with Lauryn Hill in Sister Act 2 — in 2010 at Maryland’s Love Festival, for which Tanya was a producer and Michael was one of the performers. Michael had only returned from Iraq recently, and Tanya was dealing with her own struggles. In the early ‘90s, she’d signed to Polydor Records and had enjoyed some success on the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop charts with her debut album, Natural Thing, and had even received a nomination for Best New Artist at the Soul Train Awards. But after signing to Bad Boy Entertainment in 1996, her sophomore album was shelved indefinitely, her career stalled, and it took her years to get released from her Bad Boy contract.
Michael and Tanya married a year after they met, welcomed a son (named Legend, coincidentally) in 2012, and in 2014 started a band that would go on to earn multiple Grammy, CMA, CMT, and ACM nominations and win four Americana Music Awards. But the War and Treaty’s life still wasn’t fairytale — so their biopic won’t be, either.
“The [film’s] tagline is: ‘The war brought him music. Music brought him love.’ So, it predominantly talks about my struggles with PTSD, some of the things I picked up from the military and serving our country in the war,” says Michael, who wrote the War and Treaty’s song “Five More Minutes” about a harrowing moment in 2017 when Tanya convinced him not to commit suicide, and has always been open about his mental health issues. “But then [the film] tells about how I dropped those things through love and through Tanya being my caretaker — which is what she actually was for about 15 years.”
“I think it’s important too for people, especially people who are caretakers, to be able to see themselves on film, because you always see the one that’s going through it, but you never see the one that has to do the caretaking,” explains Tanya. “I think that’s important, to tell both sides of the story. And hopefully the film does that.”
“I think in our country, we need to be inspired again,” Michael attests. “[It is] a beautiful love story, especially for people of color, that stems from the military. Oftentimes it said that we [Black people] aren’t as patriotic as we should be, especially with our history in this country. But for me, serving my country is the biggest thing I did — second to marrying Tanya. So, I believe that this is the right time to be able to tell this kind of story.”
If you or someone you know is struggling, text or call 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
