Spike Lee wants you to know that he is not related to Aiyana-Lee. “Maybe way in the roots,” he laughs.

In Spike Lee’s “ Highest to Lowest ,” streaming on Apple TV, Denzel Washington plays music producer David King, a man with an ear for talent. As it turns out, so does Spike Lee. He heard Aiyana-Lee’s “My Idols Lied to Me.”

“I felt it was autobiographical,” Spike Lee says of the song. He reached out to her on Instagram, and after meeting in Los Angeles, Aiyana-Lee landed a part in “Highest to Lowest,” playing Sula, a rising talent yearning for her big break. At the end of the film, Washington’s King sits down to listen to Sula as she performs the song “Highest to Lowest” live in front of him, moving him to tears.

“When he’s tearing up, that’s you,” Spike Lee tells Aiyana-Lee. Here, t

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