- So you were honored recently by Elle
at their Women in Hollywood Event,
and your acceptance speech went viral, as far as I saw,
And the quote that I love the most,
you said, we can be more than the dancing fucking bear.
We can be in charge.
And it made me wonder,
what were the times in your career, if any,
where you felt like the dancing bear?
- Most of it.
- Really? - Yeah, more times than not.
- How so?
- Because, being an actor has been a wonderful career,
it's afforded me so many wonderful things
and it's challenged me and I've grown
and I've been able to do what I love to do.
But also as the actor,
you don't really have the ability
to be in control in a real way,
say you're an actor and I can only come to the set
or to the situation and do what I can do.
But without being the producer or the director,
I have no control over how that film is put together
or how it turns out, right?
And so many times
I think, carried the burden of failures
that were not really mine
because I we're powerless to the process, right?
I can think of one movie like "Catwoman",
which I loved doing, I worked really hard becoming a cat,
I learned capoeira like I did.
I thought my job as learning to be a cat
and as an actor that was my job.
But I wasn't in control of the script.
I didn't direct it nor did I produce it.
But it's alleged failure
sort of fell squarely on my shoulders
as if I was in control of all of it, which I wasn't.
So, that's what I mean about being the dancing bear.
I was powerless only to my part as an actor.
And when you're a producer or even a director,
then you have more power to affect the outcome
and the finished product.
- And actually that's what led you
to your most recent project "Bruised"
where you are the director.
- Yes.
- Is becoming the director or becoming the producer like,
is that the only way to stop being
the dancing bear fucking bear?
- For me, but it doesn't mean it's true for everybody.
Not everybody feels like the dancing fucking bear.
So, it's only my truth and I don't own the truth.
It's just my truth.
That's how I have felt over the years.
And so producing whenever I could,
and now directing just gives me a greater sense of control
over my own destiny.
And it doesn't mean that because I direct something
it's gonna be great,
but at least I will live and die on my own choices,
not on those of other people and that I can live with.
- That's powerful.
That's a very powerful statement.
Speaking of powerful.
And speaking of "Bruised", you got hit a lot in this movie.
(both laughs)
It was tough to watch.
I'm just like, yo, this is Halle Berry chill, chill, relax.
But my biggest question
is how do you direct yourself in a movie?
- Yeah, I was curious about that too.
(both laughs)
I was like, how is this going to work?
Part of it for me was trusting myself and my own instincts.
I've been, been working as an actor for 30 years.
So there's so many things I've learned along the way.
I've studied at different schools,
different places with different teachers, different outlets.
So there's a wealth of information and knowledge
about the craft that I've accrued over the years.
And in this moment,
I had to rely on myself and my own instincts.
And I also know as an actor,
when I'm in a scene with other actors,
usually we know when we've hit it.
We know when we have achieved a sense of reality,
that is palpable, like we feel it.
Scenes feel different when they work and when they don't.
But I also had a really dear friend of mine, Denise Woods.
She's a dialect coach, I really renowned one.
And she was there for me.
And she would remind me,
when I would be rehearsing in the scene
and I would be making sure all the other actors
we're prepared and I would give them little notes
or give them tweaks.
And she would come up to me and say,
"okay, everybody is great".
Now act take off your director hat
'cause you're directing in the scene, you're not acting,
forget about everybody else and I'll just go be an actor.
And then she would jerk my chain
and free me to now just go be a fellow fesbian in the scene
and forget that I was still the director.
And that proved to be very valuable for me.
- How do you approach preparation for a role in general?
Like what does it mean to prepare to play an MMA fighter
who gets hit and pushed down a lot?
- Well, that was to play Jackie Justice
was a physical challenge.
That took a lot of training and practice,
hours and hours and hours.
I'd probably train for almost two years.
And I'm not as young as I used to be.
- What?
- So, I got to push my body, to new limits
and I got to defy age.
And that's what I'm most happy about.
I get to say with this performance, fuck age,
fuck that number that we get born with.
It doesn't define us.
We create our reality
and we can be whatever age we wanna be.
And I hate that, especially as women,
especially in Hollywood, before they even say your name,
they say your age, they don't do this to men. (chuckles)
They don't do this to men.
And it really makes me angry
that we're always trying to deflect that number.
When we're too young, we wanna be older.
When we're older, we want you to forget,
like why can't we just be the beings that we are,
why does it have to be defined by how many years
you've been on the planet?
- Yeah.
Because then it just feels like you're always
disappointing somebody in some kind of way.
If you live your life, according to what this age is-
- It's supposed to be,
or you being judged or compared to other people
that age and especially dangerous for women,
we compare ourselves with each other like that a lot
because of age.
And we're not allowed to,
you can't wear that because you're too old to wear that,
or you're too young.
Like it's, our age is always circling around us,
and dictating the choices we make
and the things we think we can and cannot do
and what we should be able to do or allowed to do
and it's maddening.
- And it's exhausting.
And nearly as exhausting as (laughs) who think down all
these people, it was greatnes, I loved it.
But I was like, oh my goodness,
did you hurt yourself at all?
Was there a body double?
Was it like really you and all of those things,
taking people down?
Is it part of the magic that I'm not allowed to know?
- No, it was really me.
- Wow.
- All of our bodies are so unique.
So you start to put in a body double with those clothes.
You're gonna tell right away.
So, I had worked on "John wick" before this.
And what I learned from Chad Stahelski, on that movie
and Keanu is that when you're playing a lot with doubles,
you have to shoot it in certain ways to hide
that it's not the person, right?
So you're very limited.
But when the performers really do it themselves
as a director, I was free.
I was like a kid in a candy store.
I could shoot any way I wanted to shoot
because it was really me and Valentina Shevchenko.
She's the UFC Flyweight Champion.
- I can tell you looking at your face
and how you just lit up that freedom
is worth the breaking of bones.
I read that you broke three ribs.
I think on "John Wick"?
- And on "John Wick 3" and on "Bruised" too.
(both laughs)
Two days into a five day fight sequence,
our big fight at the end, beginning of day two,
I broke two ribs.
- Wow.
- Because I had broken ribs on "John wick",
I knew exactly what that felt like.
And I knew that it had happened,
but I also knew that I had worked so hard
to get this movie made, to raise the money,
to defy the odds,
all this training I did with Valentina on my own.
I knew that if I told somebody, oh, I broke some ribs.
They would shut me down.
And it would be the end of the film.
And I would probably never recapture it.
I think I would have missed the moment.
If I had to wait.
- Sorry to interrupt.
Does that mean that you didn't tell anybody
that you broke ribs when you felt it?
- No.
I told one person and that person said to me,
be a real fighter in this moment,
suck it up and keep on going.
They will shut you down
and you probably won't come back to this.
And in that moment I saw my dream dying so hard,
and I thought, watch me suck it up. (chuckles)
(interviewer laughs)
We pushed through it.
- Wow.
So you just went to work the next day, broken rib?
- Yep.
I told them when the fight sequence was over,
when I knew that the risk of shutting me down was over
then I told them, and I literally,
by the end of the fight sequence,
I had gotten to a point where I just couldn't breathe.
So I had to tell somebody that,
because I literally couldn't take a deep breath
at that point.
And in the fight,
I didn't have to talk so I could be in pain
and I could be wheezing and who would,
but the rest of the movie now required me to use my voice.
So I had to tell them, I breathe, I have to go.
So I went to the hospital and that's when I found out
I had two broken ribs
and we didn't even miss a day because this was on a Friday.
So by the time Monday came around, I had two days of rest
and then I was ready to go back at it.
And then we just sort of shifted our schedule a little bit.
And I put all the other heavy physical scenes of fighting
towards the end of shooting
so that I could at least have a month
of a little bit of recovery.
So my ribs could heal a little bit.
And then I just continued on with the film.
- Wow.
When I have a hangnail,
(Halle chuckles)
I'm not gonna be able to make it today.
I need, it's just too much for me.
- I don't mean that that's not true, I don't believe it.
- When we're gonna go with that version of the story.
I love it.
Speaking of bodies,
I was also very taken by the love scene
between your character, Jackie justice and Sheila Adam,
who plays your trainer.
And I think I can name one other time maybe,
I've seen two black women in an intimate scene in a film.
I'm so curious about how you approached
that particular sex scene.
I don't wanna insult men (chuckles)
but I just assumed it's different.
- It's different.
Yeah, like even in this movie, I have a scene with a man.
I have a sexy with my characters boyfriend in the movie.
And that scene, I shot very differently, emotionally,
the characters were coming from a different place.
Their love scene reflected
the dynamic of their relationship,
they kinda had this love, hate.
They were both fighters.
So they fought during their lovemaking
or their sex scene,
fighting was the way they had learned to communicate.
And that felt normal for them.
And I think that man loved her.
He just was so fractured himself
that he just didn't know how,
so their love looked like that,
it was rough and it was ruckus and it was passionate.
But somehow there was an edge of scary in it, fear, smashing
like there was a lot of aggression and dominance, right?
And with Buddhakan Jackie's trainer, which was a woman.
What I was trying to show with that scene was that,
as women, sometimes we fix each other's crowns
in such a way just by being women
and being feminine and being soft.
And this woman for the first time in her life,
someone really saw her, she asked her, are you scared?
Nobody ever bothered to ask this character, was she scared?
Her boyfriend kept saying,
get back in that fight, you were born a fight,
get it, get it, get it.
He was coming from what he understood.
And the woman said to her,
let's talk about how you're feeling.
And once I understand how you feel and fix your crown
and affirm you and make you feel good,
then I'm gonna love you.
And when my character gave over to that, in that moment,
there was great healing.
And that was the power of the two different love scenes
and the way sometimes men and women approach things.
- What is it that draws you to underdogs
and characters like Jackie Justice?
- I totally relate.
- Yeah.
- It's my life, it's in my DNA.
I felt an underdog my whole life.
I understand fractured broken relationships.
I understand generational trauma.
I understand alcoholism, drug addiction, sex addiction,
all of these things have been things
that I've had to grow through,
go through and not only survive,
but figure out ways to thrive within those situations.
So, I'm always drawn to characters that are fractured
and broken and fighting too.
I feel like I'm a natural born fighter, it's inside me.
- Yeah, it definitely comes across on screen.
- I love that.
'Cause you have to worry about nothing.
Like the more jacked up I looked
the better it was for the day.
(interviewer laughs)
I was up all night, drinking bourbon greats.
- Yes.
- I'm gonna look great in the morning.
It was so good not to have that pressure
or that expectation, to just let it be what it was.
And it was all good.
It serviced the character, right?
- Yeah, that you just answered my question.
I was gonna ask about the weight of words,
like gorgeous and pretty and most beautiful woman
in the world, which sound great and lovely,
but also terrifying and like suffocating,
did you find that?
- Yeah, and this is a hard thing to say
because people will probably give me shit
and feel like, oh yeah, right Halle Berry.
But the truth is you know what I long for
is for somebody to come up to me and say,
oh my God, I love your work.
Or you are a wonderful actor or you are a great mom,
you fought for that Senate Bill 606.
I'm proud of you yeah,
but it's always just, you're beautiful.
- Yeah.
- And I have worked so hard to be more than that.
And it's hard for people to hear me say that,
'cause they're like, oh, poor you Halle Berry,
but I've just learned to be so much more than that.
- I would be run out of my entire community.
If I did not ask you at least one question about "B*A*B*S".
I love "B*A*B*S".
I'm certain this is not the first time that you've heard it,
but it just, it just makes me feel so good.
But I thing that I wonder
as I'm seeing people dressing up as the lead characters
in the movie is how blackity black, black, black,
those characters are?
Blackity, black, black, black, black.
- Blackity, black, black, black, black.
- Yes.
- I know and they're beloved.
- And they're beloved, yeah.
- And I knew it at the time that they would be beloved,
they in Robert Townsend really made me understand
why they would be beloved.
It was a real depiction of us in a really beautiful way.
And it takes one to be one, to know one,
to understand it really, you know what I mean?
And that's a role that I'm really, really proud of.
- Yeah.
I feel like now there's this current of unapologetic
blackness that really, really celebrates
those images and depictions of black people,
especially black women.
But did you find that it was received
with the same sort of energy?
- Not like it is now because we weren't ready.
I remember when we were making it,
I talked with Robert about it
and there was a feeling of kinda like with "Boomerang" too,
we were a little bit before its time,
but that often happens when you're innovating.
And you're making a new way or a way out of no way,
you sometimes are a bit ahead of your time
and people don't quite get it in the moment,
but as years go by, they catch up to it
and go, ah, I get it now I get it.
And I get so much more love for "Boomerang"
and "B*A*B*S" now than I ever did at the time.
It resonates with the audiences of that time.
And even the younger audiences,
they can look at it and appreciate it too.
So that's a good feeling.
- Does that ever get frustrating though,
being so far ahead of your time and then sort of getting
your pats on the back, like later?
- Yeah.
Well, the truth is I never do anything for a pat
on the back.
I do things because I'm inspired, because I wanna grow,
I wanna take risks, I wanna push the envelope,
I wanna see how far I can go.
So no,
'cause I never do it for that in the first place.
So the pats, if they come, I'm always appreciative.
- I think I just learned a life lesson today
ladies and gentlemen.
I cannot thank you enough once again for your time
and also for your resilience in this industry.
Because for so many black girls for so long,
it was like you and three other people was all we have.
And I can't imagine the stress
and the pressure and how tired your shoulders must be,
but you keep electing and choosing every day
'cause you don't have to make anything else
if you never want to.
But the fact that you keep choosing every day
to come back to this arena and to keep pushing on like it,
we feel you, we see you, we appreciate you
beyond your gorgeous face.
- I learned a long time ago,
not to set goals for two reasons.
One, I might not reach the goals
and I might feel like a failure
and feel disappointed in myself and who needs that.
And two,
I might not set my goals high enough
and I might limit myself and I may not get where I can go.
So, I try to just keep challenging myself,
staying authentically, who I am, even when others criticize
or don't understand where I'm going.
I say, I'm going my own way.
You don't have to understand.
And I try to be authentic in my approach
and stay relentless in my search for what I want.
And if I can continue to do that,
I have all the faith in the world
that I will arrive at my destiny
and I will arrive at the exact place at the right.
- I cannot wait to go home and tell my therapist
that Halle Berry said, I don't need to have goals.
So, take that.
(both laughs)
- That's the same thing my daughter said
when I told her this, she goes,
so that means I have to work for nothing.
- Do you have of any upcoming upcoming projects,
anything to hip people to things to look for?
Aside from the movie "Bruise",
I don't mean to like push it, like what's next, what's next.
But-
- I got a thing that I'm working on to direct next,
which I'm excited about.
I have a film coming out called "Moonfall"
with Roland Emmerich comes out February.
- Okay.
- Another movie,
a science fiction movie that revolves around a black family.
Now we've never seen this like "ET"
that wasn't a black family.
- Right.
- Right, we've never seen a black family
find a spaceship in their backyard.
And that's another project on Netflix
that I'm excited about that's gonna come out next year.
- Excellent.
Well, I'm excited to support everything that you do
coming up and thank you.
- Thank you very much.