Hey, I'm Gina Prince-Bythewood,
director of The Old Guard
Ow!
I've been making movies and TV for 25 years now.
Let's move!
Wait for the signal.
How the hell can you even tell?
Oh.
My first job in the industry
was on A Different World,
which was my favorite show at the time.
That show had three Black women in prominent positions.
Susan Fales-Hill was exec producer.
Debbie Allen was producer/director.
And Yvette Lee Bowser was a producer.
The fact that for my first gig, at 22 years old,
I got to go to work and Black women were running things,
that was my normal.
And that absolutely was such an incredible influence.
I did not know how a writers' room really worked.
I was very fortunate that I had great mentors,
because the writers' rooms can be a vicious place,
especially a comedy writers' room.
I mean, if you're not funny, if you are not brave,
you will get crushed pretty quickly.
The other amazing thing about my first job
at A Different World is that
a man named Reggie Rock Bythewood
was hired a week after I was.
We clicked immediately, became best friends.
And then, you know, six years later, he became my husband.
So it was a really great time being in that room.
I ended up quitting television
and giving myself a year to write a screenplay.
That script was actually Love & Basketball,
and it was really locked in my head
as the first thing I wanted to write.
I got scared that nobody would care
about this story about this Black girl
who wants to be the first girl in the NBA.
Who was gonna buy that?
And I tried to write something else
that I thought the industry would want.
I just kept getting writer's block.
And it was because this personal story
was just locked in my head.
And I decided, "Let me just go for it."
It's really hard to write a spec,
because there's no guarantee
that anyone's ever gonna buy it.
But I believed in this story,
my husband Reggie Rock believed in the story,
and we spent a year and a half pounding out the script,
believing it, fighting for it.
I mean, it's an incredibly lonely place to be,
but there are also those amazing moments as a writer,
I call it the flow,
where, I don't know where it's coming from,
but my fingers are going and I'm typing
and the characters are talking to me.
It's an amazing thing.
And so, I wanted to write a Black Harry Met Sally,
I'd loved that film, I loved what it had to say.
But I also knew that those type of films
were not being made with Black characters in 'em.
I am blessed to be in this position,
but it has been incredibly tough.
It's been a tough journey.
I think the toughest thing for me throughout these years
is discrimination against the type of stories
that I wanna tell.
You know, I love telling stories
and putting Black women at the center.
I think if you look at my body of work,
starting with Love & Basketball
and all the way up to The Old Guard,
with KiKi Layne's character, Nile,
I want to put Black women on screen
and often center them in their own stories.
And it is tough to tell our stories,
but I know growing up how hard it was
just watching TV, going to the movies,
I never saw myself reflected,
and it makes you feel invisible.
I want to give little Black girls
the opportunity to go to the movies
and see themselves reflected,
because I know what it can do for you.
I know, not only for Black women and Black girls
and Black boys and Black men,
but also how important it is for the world to see us
in ways that are inspiring
or that people can aspire to be.
More of our stories need to be made, absolutely.
Get down! Get on the ground now!
Get on the ground!
Shots Fired, my husband and I co-created,
and it was a story that we absolutely needed to tell.
Frighteningly, the same things are going on at this time.
But at that time, it was Mike Brown, it was Trayvon Martin.
Given that we had two boys, we needed to tell this story,
we wanted to try and use our art
to change what was happening
to allow, basically white folks,
to understand what we go through
when these deaths happen.
And so, we had the idea to flip the narrative
and show, okay, so what would happen
if a Black cop killed a white kid?
How would you feel about it then?
In addition to also having a young Black boy
that was killed, and to be able to show the difference
in how it's handled.
You know, it was interesting to go back
and now suddenly have a writers' room
and have other writers that you could bounce things off of
that could bring their own ideas
to what we had already put on paper.
It was a really good room,
it was a really good collaboration,
I enjoyed that again, after so many years
of really being on my own.
And, you know, would absolutely do it again.
I make my choices on what stories I'm gonna tell by my gut.
It is absolutely a thing I have to feel,
and when I read a script,
if I've got that guttural feeling
of, "I have to do something," as opposed to, "I want to,"
it's that "have to" that drives me and makes me say yes.
You have to be passionate
to get you through that, the tough moments
of directing a film.
On set, for me as a director,
I feel like I'm always chasing the perfect take,
and I've seen it, and it's an amazing feeling
to get a perfect performance,
and it inspires me to get up every day.
I love the collaboration.
I love working with actors.
For me, trusting my gut, and knowing what appeals to me,
which are films that are fun, that move me,
but absolutely have something to say.
I hope that my work ultimately can change the world.
That is why I'm an artist.
It sounds incredibly lofty, maybe even arrogant,
but that is why I'm an artist.
I need to change the world.
Again, film is so powerful, television is so powerful,
it can literally change perception and change culture.
And we see what is going on in the world today.
It is absolutely,
we have to change the narrative.
We have to change the narrative of how people see us
and how people feel about us,
and we really do have the power to do that
with film and television.
So I hope that my work, in centering it on Black folks,
and certainly Black women,
that that will be my legacy.