The Woman King director Gina Prince-Bythewood on true stories, brutal fights, and what matters when making a historical epic
Gina Prince-Bythewood describes her road to making The Woman King as a “sustained fight for 25 years.” But she says with this cast, led by the formidable Viola Davis, in this movie, a Braveheart-esque historical action drama about female warriors in West Africa … the sustained fight was worth it.
“It’s an amazing thing to fight as hard as one has to fight for your vision,” she tells Polygon just two days before the film’s release.
Prince-Bythewood, who came up in television in the early ’90s, broke out as a writer-director with the 2000 indie Love & Basketball. But while she seemed to be on the familiar Sundance-hit-to-superhero-movie director pipeline, Love & Basketball’s success opened the door to an industry that still couldn’t imagine a Black woman making any high-profile studio project, let alone four-quadrant-friendly action blockbusters. In the two decades that followed, Prince-Bythewood swung from TV to dramatic features, with projects like Beyond the Lights and TV’s Shots Fired, all while hoping to finally get a crack at breaking some on-screen bones. The chance finally came with 2020’s full-bore action drama The Old Guard, which caught the attention of Netflix viewers everywhere — and Viola Davis. Set to star and produce The Woman King, it was obvious to Davis that Prince-Bythewood was the person to make a film where the Fences Oscar-winner smashes brutes twice her size into oblivion. The director was happy to oblige.
The Woman King stars Davis as Nanisca, defender of the Dahomey Kingdom led by King Ghezo (John Boyega). Nanisca is general to the Agojie, an all-women military faction trained for Spartan-like deadliness. With the violent Oyo Empire capturing and enslaving the Dahomey people, and European coin
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