With The Woman King now playing in theaters, I recently got to speak with director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s (The Old Guard, Love & Basketball) about making the movie inspired by true events. During the interview, Bythewood talked about how the success of Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther opened the door for The Woman King to be made, what she learned making The Old Guard that helped her on this film, the challenge of filming the action scenes, and the editing process.

The Woman King tells the story of the all-female unit of warriors who protected the African Kingdom of Dahomey which was one of the most powerful states in the continent of Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The film follows Nanisca (Viola Davis) as she trains the next generation of recruits and readies them for battle against an enemy determined to destroy their way of life. Also starring in the film are Lashana Lynch, John Boyega, Thuso Mbedu, Sheila Atim, Adrienne Warren, Jayme Lawson, and Hero Fiennes-Tiffin.

The film was written by Dana Stevens and based on a story by Maria Bello and Stevens. The Woman King’s cinematographer is Polly Morgan, and the producers were Cathy Schulman, Viola Davis, Julius Tennon, and Maria Bello.

Watch what Gina Prince-Bythewood had to say above, or you can read our conversation below.

COLLIDER: I have a million questions for you, but do you think this gets made without the success of Black Panther that showed audiences will come out to see an all Black cast?

GINA PRINCE-BYTHEWOOD: I absolutely believe the success of Black Panther opened the door for this to be made. It was being developed prior to Black Panther coming out, but it didn't have its green light. Black Panther changed everything, changed the game, changed culture, changed perception. Showed the value in our stories and that audience would come out and see our stories. So thank you Ryan Coogler for making such a dope movie.

Viola Davis about to fight
Image via Sony Pictures Releasing

I thought you did such a great job with Old Guard and that allowed you to sort of play in that bigger sandbox with action and more than you had done previously. What did you learn making that that you brought with you into this?

PRINCE-BYTHEWOOD: God, so much. I mean, foremost, that's where I met Danny Hernandez. He was my fight coordinator in Old Guard. He was my second call when I got this. I'm like, "I need you to come with me onto this journey." Because he's brilliant and our collaboration was so good. I understood what it takes to... God to capture action. It sounds easy, but it's not or obvious. If you do not have it on set, you're not going to have in the edit room.

When you're going, you're on take 14, 15, 16, and it's just not working, you can't stop. You can't suddenly say, "I'm running out of time and let's just move on." So knowing how long you have to go at it and how long the actors have to have that type of stamina as well. But all of these actors, they wanted to be great. They never quit. Some of the moves in there that you see in this film, I mean, they did all that, and they didn't quit till they got it right.

I'm going to commend you on... I watch a lot of movies and one of the things is I can totally tell when it's the stunt double when you're seeing the back of the head, when there are 20 cuts in three seconds to make it look like there's action. But this is really being done on set. I know you didn't have Marvel money to make this, so what ended up being the toughest thing that maybe the line producer's like, "You're not going to get that." And you're like, "We are getting this."

PRINCE-BYTHEWOOD: Oil battle. I had 11 days to do it and people didn't think I could do it. There's a little piece of me that was like how are we going to do this battle? I mean, the plane fight in Old Guard, that was two people in a tin can and that was five days. So how do we do oil battle? But we had such a great plan, Danny and I and Polly Morgan, the DP, how we were going to capture all of it, and we did.

jayme-lawson-the-woman-king
Image via Sony Pictures

I'm always fascinated by the editing process and ultimately that's where it all comes together. So did you have a much longer cut? What ended up happening in the editing room that maybe people would be surprised?

PRINCE-BYTHEWOOD: I mean, foremost, I have an incredible editor, Terry Shropshire, who's cut every film of mine, every pilot, every music video, everything. So we have an incredible collaboration and trust, which I needed on this given there was so much footage, so little time and I knew that she could get it done. This is a historical epic. There's a lot of footage and there is a director's cut, but it's not dramatically different than the film. As it should be. If it's dramatically different then something went wrong in the process. But there's a couple scenes that are in the deleted scenes that they just didn't fit for the film, but I still want an audience to see.