Directors on Directors: Ryan Coogler & Gina Prince-Bythewood
Gina Prince-Bythewood and Ryan Coogler sit down for a conversation about Hollywood, The Woman King, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the cultural impact of their films, and creating art. The two trade stories of their struggles as Black directors and examine how their movies, both of which unfold in African kingdoms (one imagined and one reclaimed), manage to walk the line between art and populism.
“It was beautiful to see the way that you honored Chadwick Boseman and to continue the story. I loved that it was Shuri’s story and the fact that in this huge platform, you were able to tell such a personal story and have depth about what grief really means.”
Gina starts the conversation by recounting her attendance at the world premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. She was impressed by Ryan’s work and felt moved by how the film dedicated itself on the memory of Chadwick Boseman and his character T’Challa. Ryan appreciates the compliments and is thankful for Gina in attending the premiere. Ryan adds that in addition to the passing of Chadwick Boseman and the film centering around loss, the focus on motherhood and family was particularly emotional for him. He sees his films as providing many opportunities for him and his team, one of which is sitting down and talking with Gina. Ryan claims that Gina’s movies mean a lot to him, his wife, and his friends. The Women King was especially impactful for Ryan because he felt the film had the same level of scope as famous action movies like Gladiator and Braveheart. He believed that The Woman King was a very sentimental story that seemed, in his opinion, to be Gina’s most personal film.
Ryan felt proud witnessing Gina enable the existence of such a film and moved by her ability to create something historical but still fresh and new with elements of empowerment and education. Gina mentions how she felt blessed by the actors she worked with on The Woman King. She saw them as having amazing acting chops, passion, and impeccable work ethic. Gina felt she had actors and people who had her back and followed along in her journey while showing tremendous respect for the process. At the end of the day, Gina sees the work as the performance and the relationship with the actors.
“I loved everything about it. I loved the historical aspect of it, and I loved these female characters. I remember reading these women rise up out of the grasses and in my head, I knew I wanted to shoot this and I knew who I wanted in it. The fact that Viola Davis was attached was an opportunity to touch greatness.”
Curious about the filmmaking process of The Woman King, Ryan asks how long shooting lasted and at what moment did Gina feel that this was her movie—her next big thing. Gina reveals that by the time she started filming, she had just come out of finishing The Old Guard (2020) film. The Old Guard was a two-year project that was emotionally difficult for Gina because she was away from her family for extended periods of time. She wanted a break and promised to step away from directing until her sons graduated high school. However, everything changed when Gina received the script for The Woman King. She felt the story was everything her career had been building up to.
Referencing the action movies Ryan talked about earlier, Gina expressed her love for those movies, but laments how she never saw Black actors in them. As such, her goal is to make a historical epic focusing on an all-Black cast. Gina remembers loving the first draft of The Woman King, but was torn due to her promise to be on hiatus in favor of spending time with her family. At the time, she sent the script to her husband, Reggie Rock, for his input. She jokingly reveals that two hours later, Reggie texted Gina back, saying, “Here’s your next movie.” Viola Davis being attached to the film was another reason Gina agreed to shoot The Woman King. She also knew from the start that she wanted to cast Lashana Lynch and John Boyega.
Gina states filming for The Woman King began roughly at the end of post-production for The Old Guard in 2019. In addition to the three-year journey to film The Woman King, Viola Davis, Julius Tennon, and the producers spent seven years getting the movie set up and greenlit. Gina relates The Woman King and the Black Panther franchise as disrupting genres. Disrupting in how it shook up misconceptions and disbelief for Black leads and an all-Black cast. Gina believes it was not just the success of Black Panther that changed mindsets, but also how its story infused Black culture and opened the door for films like The Woman King. She was honestly unsure if her film would have been greenlit if Black Panther and everything Ryan did on set didn’t happen.
Ryan felt honored to be praised by Gina. As someone who grew up watching Gina’s movies, Ryan sees what he did in Black Panther as paying forward the inspiration he received form her. He talks about how he appreciates Gina, as a director, for presenting her characters in a safe space. He references how Gina’s film Love and Basketball (2000) makes him feel like he can lean in and get comfortable watching the characters open up. Ryan believes this same sensation in also found in The Woman King. When he watched The Woman King, Ryan felt that Gina incorporated many archetypical characters: the general, the wisecracking second-in-command, the young trainee upstart, and the confidant. To see these archetypes played by recognizable Black women gave Ryan a sense of familiarity with how he felt watching classic action movies. In short, Ryan strongly believes Gina made something unique that will age well.
“I thought that I wanted to make things I could relate to, movies that I wanna see. Each time I make a movie, I’m dealing with my own personal fears. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to start from the script [Black Panther: Wakanda Forever].”
Gina recalls that the first time she and Ryan met was at the premiere of Ryan’s film Fruitvale Station (2003) at the Sundance Film Festival. Gina admits to “ugly crying” while watching the movie. She was also excited to meet Ryan. She felt that what Ryan did in the film had depth. Every film Ryan has worked on has, in Gina’s opinion, shifted culture by centering on Black men and Black masculinity in different ways. Ryan’s films went against what many grew up thinking those two aspects should be. She then asks Ryan if his focus on Black men and Black masculinity is intentional or if it’s something he wishes to see in films. If not, is it that audiences don’t get to see that, so he wants to be the one putting that into the world?
Ryan states he only desires to make films he can relate to. He notes when he works on a movie, he’s dealing with his fears of being alone. Sometimes in films like Fruitvale Station, Ryan was on his own with writing and directing. Nowadays, he feels blessed to have co-writers. He reveals a common theme in his film addressing the question, “What are we afraid of?” Ryan’s characters often wrestle with fear: in Fruitvale Station, the main character’s fear is realized; and Creed centers around the fear of not realizing your full potential before it’s too late. For Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, an idea of a man who had many people counting on him is suddenly taken away from those people—how do they pick up the pieces? Ryan believes that feeling was palpable on set after the announcement of Chadwick Boseman’s passing. Ryan wished to echo that process of acceptance and moving on in the film.
“So many of us grew up being taught that our history begins with enslavement, and not how there’s so much more to us. I knew centering that was going to be different.”
Ryan then talks about how he and his family have a history of being athletes. They frequently quoted scenes from Love and Basketball because he and his family felt connected to the film—it felt honest—something rarely found in cinema. Ryan explains he felt a familiarity with almost every scene from The Woman King despite that film portraying things he has never seen before. He asks Gina about that feeling and questions at what point did she realize she created something that hadn’t been done before. Was it when she read the script or when she got into the work?
Gina claims the realization came after she read the script. She remembers thinking, “Damn, we get to center Black women in a story like this.” The fact that The Woman King was a story in history that was erased and knowing how often such an occurrence happens with Black people spurred Gina to pursue the film. Once rehearsals started, Gina believed things began to feel more real. The rehearsal was training, and Gina assigned the actresses to train for months because she wanted them to do their own fighting and stunts. She wished for the actresses to feel what it’s like to be a warrior on a molecular level. Part of the difficulty of the training was due to many of these actresses never performing such rigorous exercises.
Gina recalls walking into the first day of training. Seeing Viola Davis, Lashana Lynch, Thuso Mbedu, and Adrienne Warren pushing themselves excited Gina, and got her thinking about how she had never seen this before. Having that feeling every day on set was inspiring, and Gina enjoyed seeing how the actresses were connecting with their characters. Gina and every actress felt honored to tell this forgotten story of African history, and together, they wanted to get the story right.
“Just to see the way that they’re described by the colonizers where they talked about these women as being ugly and mannish and savage. Whereas when you’re talking to people who’re our ancestors, they talk about the beauty of the kingdom, the colors, and the strength of these women.”
Curious about the shooting locations of The Woman King, Ryan asks Gina what it was like filming on the continent of Africa. Shooting straight out of South Africa, Gina thought what was most beautiful about the process was the crew. Gina explains how she could only bring her department heads from the United States, so the crew was recruited locally. She remembers how everyone on set was passionate and appreciative to tell this story. For Gina, it was a brutal shoot, but there was so much depth to it. The crew was the most diverse group of individuals she has had in her entire career. It was amazing to see the respect the cast and crew put into the film despite how tough and unfamiliar the shooting could get.
Regarding cinematography, Gina credits British cinematographer Polly Morgan. The Woman King was the first time Gina worked with Polly, and together, they delivered on replicating an intimately epic feel to the film. Gina’s only mandate to Polly was having the actresses shot more beautifully than they ever have. This decision came from Gina’s recollection on how, historically speaking, Black people are shot poorly on film. In her opinion, everyone deserves to be captured well.
Before moving on, Gina also wished to credit her production designer Akin McKenzie whom she praises for having a special mind. Akin and Gina worked together in deep-dive research for worldbuilding the setting of The Woman King. What Gina appreciated the most about Akin’s work was how he separated the history from the oppressor’s point of view which had sought to demonize Africans. Historically accurate records show this equality between men and women within the kingdom. Akin was able to incorporate all of that into the script and production.
“When we started to expand in Black Panther and have Wakanda be juxtaposed with another hidden place [Atlantis], that was when we looked to the Americas because colonization came there as well with some results that were similar and some results that were different. That was the kind of lens that we looked for; for some cultural specificity for this new group of people.”
Gina mentions to Ryan how huge the Black Panther franchise is and claims the worldbuilding of the films felt special to her for creating two worlds: Wakanda and Atlantis. She expresses curiosity toward the fictional nations and asks how Ryan approached the world of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Ryan claims the process is not dissimilar to how Gina was talking about her team collaboration; it’s all about working with other people. Ryan and his team were working with decades of existing material of Black Panther, Wakanda, and Marvel’s rendition of Atlantis from comics. From his point of view, Ryan had a visual tapestry to pull from, but once work returned for the movie, much research and questions came up discussing how they would exist in real life.
Like The Woman King, Ryan claims there is a recurring theme of colonization within the Black Panther franchise. It was decided early on that the films would be conversations about the colonization of the African continent and global colonization. Ryan wished to explore factors like the exploitation of people’s resources and loss of territory. In the search for cultural specificity for the people of Atlantis, the Mayan people were used as a template for cultural influence. Ryan and his team wanted to give audiences something that could exist that was different, but still, feel like it was telling the same story.
Gina agrees with Ryan’s sentiments, believing the success of Ryan’s work on two Black Panther films is due to their complexity. There is a “villain” in the form of Namor (Tenoch Huerta), but the way Ryan created his backstory placed the audience into what happened to him and his people. In Gina’s opinion, it was as if audiences were in a position of rooting for the “villain” which is a unique concept. Gina believes people usually want things in black and white but going against that notion made Ryan’s work special. The humanity Ryan gave to Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) and Namor was the beauty of both films.
“For us, it was how we can tell a story that’s about us, colored people, who have been affected by this forced conflict. Who’ve been denied imagery and who’ve been denied the opportunity to tell their stories.”
Ryan claims he views movies as the time spent on them. He is always thinking about himself in his seat at a movie theater. Ryan loves when time is used on both the protagonist and the antagonist; giving time for both roles is well spent. He references The Dark Knight (2008) in his reasoning. Ryan admits the villain Joker is bad, but people looked forward to seeing him on screen. It plays into the appetite audiences have for viewing something that has been denied or seen little of. Black people, Mesoamerican descendants, and people of indigenous descent have been denied many times. Knowing that there is an interest in hearing the stories of the denied, Ryan states he would never want to use the antagonist (who takes up half of the movie) in a belligerent or non-three-dimensional way. He wants the antagonist to be someone people can identify with.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a geopolitical thriller, but it was always about a fight, and Ryan didn’t want the audience to see this fight. Despite his desires, Ryan was aware how difficult it would be to pull off. But if he could, he believed the conflict would feel real. In Ryan’s opinion, most combat is like this. He didn’t want to see nations go back and forth in war or politicians doing x, y, and z. The actual conflict is about human beings doing these things to each other, and most of the time, they’re unwilling participants. Ryan admits it was tricky to show people of color in conflict with each other, let alone do it in a way where audiences are not rooting for anybody. The primary goal of Ryan and his team was to have a sense of audiences rooting for the conflict to stop.
Gina agrees, claiming that while watching Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, she saw the conflict as people of color fighting each other and rooted for things to resolve by coming together to fight the real enemy—outside forces wishing to seize Wakanda’s and the Atlantians’ resources.
“If you got a specific vision, if you’ve got something to say as an artist, you must always get people in line with that. It’s never easy.”
Gina notes how she feels Ryan’s films give a sense of creative control. She thinks everything Ryan has done is great and understands that as Black creators, it’s a fight to have their work created. It’s a constant fight for vision, and Gina compliments Ryan for jumping into the film industry earlier than she did. She hopes that what Ryan went through to get Fruitvale Station and Creed greenlit felt worthwhile. Gina then asks Ryan if he must constantly fight for his vision. He believes so, but Ryan also states how fortunate he’s been to have collaborators he could get on the same page. Ryan approaches film with a collaborative mindset and understands that as the budget gets bigger, there’s more at stake. In his mind, Ryan never wants to be a director who asks for a large amount of money to do whatever he wants in a movie. He claims to have never experienced that pressure or expectations for himself.
Expressing his thanks to Gina for her compliments, Ryan also sees creative control in Gina’s film, with The Woman King being her biggest leap on the topic. In his opinion, the film felt like Gina. It didn’t feel any less impactful than Love and Basketball or Beyond the Lights (2014). Ryan walks onto a set with his head up and eyes wide open. He ensures the person in power he encounters sees eye-to-eye with him and meets on the same level. Ryan then asks Gina how she navigated The Woman King. He explains how the film felt personal, recalling a scene where the warriors walk home from their first battle, but people wouldn’t look at them. This scene reminded Ryan of discussions about the idea that Black women have a culture of disrespect thrust upon them. He suspected there might have been a flipside to the scene—maybe people should see these women and observe how powerful they are.
Gina loved that Ryan brought up that scene and quoted Malcolm X, “The most disrespected, the most unprotected, the most neglected person in America is a Black woman.” She claims to keep that quote in her mind every time she is in rooms with studios because she knows the fight it takes to center Black women in stories and to even get them greenlit. Gina admits to saying to everyone how she needs to be able to look up at the screen and believe everything on it. That is why she fights. She believes audiences need to understand that what is happening in The Woman King isn’t Black men versus Black women, it is two cultures fighting each other.