Halle Berry & Gina Prince-Bythewood Discuss Filmmaking and Storytelling

[film projector rattling]

[gentle somber music]

That's what I love about what we do,

is, at the end of the day, I wanna move people.

We're our first audience.

If I'm standing there, watching this thing,

and feeling the way I do,

then I feel like an audience is gonna do that.

I have been an admirer

and a fan of yours for a very long time,

and to be sitting here with you in the aftermath

of, like, your crowning achievement

is just my pleasure.

I appreciate that,

and the fact that we're sitting here as directors

after having admired your work for so long,

to be able to be a part of this

and your new incredible journey

into this very small sisterhood is really beautiful.

[light music]

How did you know that this was the first film

that you were gonna do?

That this is gonna be your debut as a director?

How did you make that choice?

I didn't.

It chose me.

And I think that is how

I will continue on my journey as a director.

It will have to choose me.

I didn't want to be a director.

Really? I have to tell,

No, I wasn't,

I think I always wanted to, but not in this moment.

I think to direct and star,

I had such a monster role to play.

To direct myself for the first time is not what,

I mean I'm not psychotic,

it's not [both laugh]

what anyone would choose to do.

But it chose me,

and it was a story that sat so deeply inside my body,

I fundamentally understood the character.

All the characters really.

All way from UFC, Jackie Justice!

Did you arrive at Woman King in a different way

than you have every other film you've done?

Or was it the same process?

It's the same process, and it's really simple.

It's a guttural connection, and it's, have to.

Yeah. Because, you know,

there's a hundred things that we wanna do.

[Halle] Yeah.

But what the journey of directing is

those two, three years of your life

where you give absolutely every part of yourself

to something, it has to mean something.

And it's a have to.

And, it's interesting with the Woman King,

it was where I wanted to go, certainly with my career.

I love historical epics,

and I always wanted to do our Braveheart,

and then suddenly the script came.

That was everything I wanted to do.

And it had Viola Davis attached.

You can't go wrong there, Gina.

[both laugh]

[ominous music]

[woman gasps]

You know, I remember

with the first time I saw the original Rocky

and what that meant to me,

how that rearranged me and moved me,

even though it was a character and a story so far

from where I was at that time in my life,

it was still the power of cinema.

It moved me.

I related to Rocky.

It was an everyman's story, and that was me.

And so I saw myself in that, somehow.

So, years later, getting to do Bruised,

I got to sort of recreate, I thought, for us,

for women of color, that same experience,

which was one of those had to do kind of moments.

[Bobbi] Good. Come on, [Hand thuds]

pick it up, pick it up.

[women grunting] [body thuds]

I felt like I was working through my life in this movie.

It was such a cathartic experience,

and sort of deal with the generational trauma passed down

from mother to daughter, and then mother to child,

mother to son.

This feeling that I have always felt

that I've had to fight for every single thing

that I've gotten in life.

Nothing has ever once not, never, not ever been given.

You know, and what that means to be a warrior,

what that means to fight,

and fight for yourself, and stand up for yourself.

and so much of who I really am,

I got to sort of use this movie as a vehicle

to sort of funnel that.

[gentle music]

Yeah. I mean I see it as

disrupting genre, which is interesting,

but just by putting us in them front and center

is disrupting the genre that we see

over and over the same folk get to be in them.

Get to tell that story. Yes.

And for us to be able to see ourselves as warriors,

as fighters, as heroes.

Yes. It's so rare.

For Woman King, that was the thing as well,

being able to put these women up on screen,

these athletes and celebrate their athleticism,

show the beauty in that, which again, we're told so often,

certainly in Hollywood of,

there's a standard of femininity and beauty.

But we know that there's such an extraordinary breadth,

and how can we continue to disrupt

and show different sides of this.

♪ On the front line ♪

♪ Ready for war ♪ ♪ Where you gon' run? ♪

And to see their power, you know?

And there's beauty in all of that power that they display.

But also, while I was, you know, experiencing their power,

I also saw their fear and their vulnerability.

All those things that also make them women, you know?

And we're allowed to sort of exist

in the totality of who we really are.

We don't have to just be strong, just be feminine.

We can be all of those things, and all at the same time.

And I saw that on all of their faces,

most of the time that they were on screen.

That resonated with me.

What's so fascinating, and you touched on it,

is some of the biggest fights

is preserving those character moments, the quiet moments,

especially in the genre, like yours, in the genre like mine.

You know, some people want to just get to the action,

get to those set pieces.

And I feel like,

yeah, the thing I had to stand in front of,

lay my body in front of were these character moments

that, for me, as a director,

I loved doing the big oil battle,

but equally loved Viola and Thuso on the scene,

Lashana and Thuso, that one-on-one, going to those depths.

[gentle music]

What I love about what we do is it's great therapy.

Yes.

And you're able to work out so much stuff

that might be going on in your personal life.

I mean, literally, if you look at my body work,

I was going through something that is reflected in that,

and Woman King, the ghetto connection,

was both who these women were as warriors,

but also the really intimate relationship

between Viola and Thuso's characters,

and that was that guttural connection.

And literally, there are scenes in there,

I remember we were shooting one in particular

where I turned to the DP,

and I said, The words, the lines in this

that I infused in that scene,

this is what I wish I had been told as a child.

And as you said, so much of that relationship

is about generational trauma,

and how do you break that cycle?

But that we are able to, in our work, go to those depths

because we, as black women, aren't often afforded that,

certainly on screen, to be able to go to those depths.

It's, we're not often centered in the stories.

Yeah.

And if we are in the stories, not part of the arts.

[Nanisca] We fight or we die.

And I remember along the way,

some people said they were questioning

if some of these themes should have been in the movie

'cause they didn't quite get them.

And I remember saying

and fighting for the truth of those moments.

And I thought, Because you don't understand it,

is exactly why I have to put it in this movie.

It has to come to light.

It's so you can maybe understand it better.

And through going on this cinematic journey,

you might understand the life of characters like this,

which are very close to me, that I know so well.

And so, when people would resist that, that's when I knew

Oh, I'm on the right track,

because you might actually learn something,

you might actually have a different perspective

about a culture, a state of being before you saw this movie.

You might actually change,

you might actually grow in some way.

And that's the reason I think for making art

and making movies sometimes

is to help people see another side of someone.

[Immaculate] Okay, that's enough. Let's go.

And why it's so important for us to be at the helm.

Yes. I mean,

Yeah. Female gaze.

Female point of view. Exactly.

And for me, I absolutely believe talent has no gender.

Yes.

But there is something different

that we bring to the table as women, as black women,

and, Yeah, it's true.

but the experience was so beautiful to be on that set

with this incredible artist,

black women in front and behind the camera,

telling this like, is it ever gonna be that good again?

But I do know, I still have stories to tell,

there's still genres I wanna disrupt.

[gentle somber music]

Like I want us in every single genre.

And certainly, I think you,

you got to do that with Bruised, and I'm curious,

yeah, what drives you?

Like, what do you wanna continue to do?

Disrupt.

I want to continue to tell stories

that, like you said, that just move me.

Yeah. You know,

I've now learned, having directed a film,

what a huge undertaking it is.

I so enjoyed being more than the dancing bear.

[Gina chuckles]

[chuckles] I so enjoyed having, I have been,

I got to put my point of view from a black woman

into the world.

And there's so many more stories, like you said,

that I wanna put that stamp on.

I wanna continue to fight, be courageous, take chances.

I've always taken chances my whole career.

I always believe if you don't, you know, risk big,

you don't win big.

And sometimes with that mentality,

you can seemingly fail just as big,

but there are no failures, right?

It's just lessons and a chance to, you know,

do something again.

And I wanna continue to do that,

and whatever that is, that will be.

I don't even have an idea what my next movie will be.

I know I've been looking, but nothing has,

nothing has grabbed me, like Bruised did.

And I know it has to grab, like grab my soul,

for me to wanna spend, or like you said,

two years away from my children, working,

like I really have to wanna do it.

Like that's, again, as artists,

it's in our job to change how people feel and think,

change perception, and our ability to make movies,

and I love that you are here now,

to be able to change way people feel about women,

how they see women, how we see ourselves.

That's what disrupting genre I think really means to me.

And I have someone to, you know, look up to

and to aspire to follow in your footsteps.

You set the bar really high for your first one,

[Halle chuckles]

and I know how we are and how we function.

There's no going backwards,

so I know you're just gonna keep getting better and better,

and, but I do really hope that we do have that opportunity

to work together. [gentle somber music]

You call me anytime.

[Gina chuckles] I'm there.

[chuckles] I'm still doing my day job.

[gentle somber music]

[film projector whirring]