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The director of “The Woman King” is constantly evolving and is not afraid to show his work. As she tells IndieWire, that persistence and confidence landed her the biggest gig of her career.
It started with a simple question: Why aren’t there more black superhero movies? For director Gina Prince-Bythewood, this inquiry opened up her journey to directing The Woman King and entering the extremely rarefied space of a black female director making a big-budget blockbuster that centers on a black story with a black woman as the star. Superhero to boot.
“I’ve always seen myself here, but the industry hasn’t seen me here,” Prince-Bythewood said in a recent interview with IndieWire. “[My whole family] loves Marvel movies. We go to all of them and it was maybe two years before Black Panther came out and my older son said to me, “Why isn’t there a black superhero?” And at that point I was like, “I’m moving on saying I would love to do this for you so let me stop saying I would love it and do that.’ So what steps should I take?’
Prince-Bythewood set out to forge his own path to a black superhero film. In 2017, the former “A Different World” writer — best known for character films like “Love & Basketball” and “Beyond the Lights” — returned to television to direct the pilot of the short-lived Marvel Freeform series “Cloak & Dagger.
Not only did it allow Prince-Bythewood to add “Marvel director” to her resume, but she got to direct her first black superhero, with actor and rapper Aubrey Joseph portraying the teenage Cloak. “I have to show [my son] superhero who looked like him,” the director said. “Once you’re in this world, that’s the first step.”
Prince-Bythewood was then tapped to direct Marvel’s Spider-Man spinoff, Silver & Black, which would make her the first black woman to direct a studio-produced superhero film. The film was ultimately scrapped, but continued to showcase Prince-Bythewood’s evolving sensibilities as an epic-minded filmmaker.
Gina Prince-Bythewood on the set of The Old Guard with stars Kiki Lane and Charlize Theron
Netflix
“It was a year and a half of my life and I learned an awful lot,” she said. “Even just being attached to it led to the ‘Old Guard.’ It’s not even irony. What is? Hell, you can’t enter the room if you don’t have action experience. But how to I receive action experience?’
It’s a sticky catch-22, and one that “The Woman King” producer Cathy Shulman faced when choosing a director for her long-running historical epic. In 2015, actor-turned-screenwriter Maria Bello pitched her a story about the Agojie, an all-female warrior unit that defended the West African kingdom of Dahomey for centuries. Shulman loved it; Hollywood slowly followed suit.
“I think it’s easier to repeat what’s already been done than to break new ground, and I think that’s because studios and financiers, all, they suffer from a crowded market and how to make something that can stand out,” Shulman told IndieWire. “Then they make the mistake of thinking, ‘If I do what’s been done before, it will stand out.'” But if you think about it, that’s kind of an oxymoron. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s better to do the thing that’s different.
Lashana Lynch, Tuso Mbedu and Gina Prince-Bythewood on the set of ‘The Woman King’
Ilse Kitschoff
So how do you prove you can do something you’ve never done before? When Shulman and Sony hired Viola Davis to produce the film and star as General Naniska, Prince-Bythewood was in post-production on her Netflix superhero hit, The Old Guard. The director knew The Woman King was the next step he wanted to take.
“It was a big, epic script, a big epic story with big sets, and I had to show them that I could do that,” Prince-Bythewood said. “I have been very deliberate in my choices in my career. And I said to them, ‘I feel like everything I’ve done up until this point has made me ready to make this movie.'”
Shulman also saw Prince-Bythewood’s careful selection at play and was moved by her previous work, especially the more emotional records. “First and foremost, she’s like the captain of the team, hence ‘Love and Basketball,'” Shulman said. “The idea that we were going to make a movie about a platoon, essentially, and that we wanted to differentiate each of the people in that group and also make sure that their interpersonal relationships were interconnected, that was obviously a given with her previous work. “
Prince-Bythewood showed that she was willing to direct a large-scale historical epic for a major studio like Sony, with a relatively modest budget of $50 million, so she invited them to see her work. The Old Guard was her most action film to date, and she knew it showcased her prowess with a seemingly new set of skills.
“She invited us, Viola and Julius [Tennon, Davis’ husband and also a producer] and I to see ‘The Old Guard’ in the editing suite,” Shulman said. “We were like, ‘Wow, she really kicked some serious ass in that act.’ Any fears that may have existed as to the size of this undertaking were instantly allayed. She became the right target and really responded to it in a personal way.”
“The Woman King”
Ilse Kitschoff
Davis was impressed, but she also gravitated toward the emotion Prince-Bythewood wanted to bring to the story. Part of the film follows young Agoji recruit Nawi (rising star Tuso Mbedu) as she navigates a complicated relationship with Davies’ Naniska as they discover a bond that transcends their warrior aspirations. For Prince-Bythewood, who was adopted as a child, it was a personal revelation.
“By industry standards, it definitely helped to see ‘The Old Guard,'” Davis told IndieWire. “But for me it was all about the first meeting with Gina at JuVee Productions, me and my husband’s production company, where she talked about the story of Nawi and Naniska and connected it to her own story. She just couldn’t help it, that strong woman. If you see Gina, she definitely acts like a woman who is very aware of her power. Seeing her cry openly did it for me.
Prince-Bythewood’s confidence impressed everyone. “It was at that first meeting that I realized my connection to the story,” said Prince-Bythewood. “I knew everything about these characters, my sporting background, who these women were, how to tell the story. And then, I had the feathering, I just did this action, let me show you. Once they saw that, that was it.
The director was hired to direct the film in 2020 and set out to shoot it on location in South Africa in November 2021. Just into the third week of filming in what was already limited production, the rise of the omicron variant of COVID-19 halted production until January 2022
“The Woman King”
Ilse Kitschoff
“It’s been a really long journey. It was the hardest shoot of my career, but also the most joyful,” said Prince-Bythewood. “I felt like I was barely making it every day because of [short] number of days and then they shut us down. I remember talking to my husband and saying, “I feel like I’m just surviving, not thriving.” During that break, I was like, “Here you are in a position you’ve dreamed of, to be on set with this talent level. If I don’t come out of this process enjoying it, accepting it, then what am I doing this for?’
It changed her thinking—or, perhaps more accurately, reminded her why she pushed so hard for the movie. The warrior spirit that guided her, that battleit was the very thing she had shown Davis, Tennon, and Shulman that had gotten her the job in the first place.
“I’m telling you, when someone is motivated by their heart and their passion, whatever that project is, they protect it, they nurture it, they honor it,” Davis said. “This is a passion that I personally want to see. These are the people I want to see on my team. [Seeing that in Gina] make her not just bad; that made her Agojie.
Sony will release The Woman King in theaters on Friday, September 16.
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