But we didn’t want it to be anything more than just the normal bruising we’ve gotten with action scenes in the past.ĭid directing your first theatrical film change how you approach working with directors on projects like this? You’re always saying, “How did I get that cut?” That’s going to happen for sure, if you’re in it. We both had done action things before, so we understood - when you’re in it, when your adrenaline is going, you always leave the set with a new scar or a new bruise. Neither one of us wanted to hurt each other, neither one of us wanted to get hurt. We’d be super-tired afterward, but we knew it was important. We had boxes to mimic different parts of the set, and we’d go through it all. Zazie and I were able to find a way to get the studio to make sure that - we had this break for the holidays, and both she and I decided, “Well, we’ll come back early so we can work together and get this right.” So literally we would be shooting all day, and then she and I would go with our stunt doubles after work, and go to the meeting room of a hotel, so we could work it out. So you really have to lean on your co-star in that regard, because safety is the biggest, most important thing, and trust comes when you’re sure about that safety. It’s a long scene, and it’s a lot of physicality. What was shooting that like?īeing in a pandemic, we did not have as much prep as one would normally have had for a scene like that. You have the most down-and-dirty fight scene in the movie. You know, the knees, I have to - it’s ice baths and things like that now. I ran track in high school, I like to play sports, I like to challenge my body, but I didn’t think I’d be challenging it the way I am now. But did I want to be doing action? Absolutely.
I would not have thought I would be doing long fight scenes at 50. Regina King: Yes, I did! Just - a long time ago! I didn’t think it would be happening once I was 50. Did you ever picture yourself as an action hero? Polygon recently talked to King about becoming an action star, accepting direction after becoming a film director, and how she was sold on starring in a Western when she doesn’t like Westerns.īetween The Harder They Fall and Watchmen, it feels like your roles are getting much more active and physical lately.
REGINA KING BOYZ N THE HOOD MOVIE
The movie’s cast is a packed roster of current Black movie stars - Idris Elba, Jonathan Majors, LaKeith Stanfield, Zazie Beetz, Delroy Lindo, Deon Cole - but King gets the movie’s biggest hands-on fight sequence, and some of its most intense one-on-one scenes. And she’s back in movies with Jeymes Samuel’s Netflix Western The Harder They Fall, playing a colorful, outsized version of real-life Old West pickpocket Gertrude Smith.
She directed her first theatrical feature, the stellar, Oscar-nominated One Night in Miami, a fictionalized account of a real-world meeting between Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, NFL player Jim Brown, and boxing legend Muhammad Ali.
REGINA KING BOYZ N THE HOOD SERIES
She’s had a 30-year career as a film actor, going back to 1991’s Boyz n the Hood.Īnd over the past few years, she’s enjoyed some of her biggest breakouts ever: She led Damon Lindelof’s HBO series Watchmen, as Angela Abar, aka the masked vigilante Sister Night.
REGINA KING BOYZ N THE HOOD TV
She made a TV movie, The Finest, about Black women in the NYPD. She’s directed episodes for a dozen different TV shows, including Scandal, This Is Us, Shameless, and Insecure. She’s done animation roles, voicing both Riley Freeman and his brother Huey on The Boondocks, and a feisty team-leader vehicle in the Cars spinoff Planes: Fire & Rescue. She’s been on sitcoms (from 227 in the 1980s to The Big Bang Theory), crime dramas ( Southland, 24) and genre TV both pulpy ( The Strain) and prestige ( The Leftovers). She’s gone back and forth between the stage, film, and television. Once you’ve earned a set of Oscar nominations for directing a celebrated movie, how do you put on a costume and move back in front of the camera to take someone else’s orders? For Watchmen star and One Night in Miami director Regina King, the move felt natural enough, because she’s made so many similar moves during her 35-year career.