The Woman King director Gina Prince-Bythewood felt ‘healed’ after shooting scene with ‘guttural’ connection to own life-Tori Brazier-Entertainment – Metro

Prince-Bythewood is a Bafta nominee for her directing work on The Woman King (Picture: TriStar Pictures/Ilze Kitshoff/Getty

*Trigger warning: This article contains mention of sexual violence. It also includes plot spoilers for The Woman King.*

Director Gina Prince-Bythewood has discussed how shooting the scene which was most pivotal to her in the making of The Woman King was a ‘healing’ experience, revealing her intensely personal connection to the film’s story.

The critically-acclaimed movie, starring Viola Davis, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim and John Boyega, tells the remarkable story of the Agojie, the all-female unit of warriors who protected the African Kingdom of Dahomey in the 1800s.

Considered a shoo-in for awards success, the film ended up controversially shut out at the Oscars and Golden Globes but received two Bafta nominations – for lead actress Davis and for Prince-Bythewood’s work at the helm.

The 53-year-old has now explained how shooting a scene between actors Davis and Thuso Mbedu, which revealed their relationship, had been ‘healing’ for her due to the circumstances reflecting her own life.

Speaking during a virtual Bafta panel with her fellow directing nominees ahead of the awards ceremony on Sunday, Prince-Bythewood said: ‘The scene that literally kept me up was the scene in the bath between Nanisca and Nawi, Viola and Thuso. That scene had to work, it’s the revelation of the relationship and the depth of the relationship.’

Recalling how ‘thankfully’ Davis was a fan of warm water, as she spent roughly six hours in a bath during shooting for the sequence, the director continued: ‘I knew what that scene was. I was so tight that day and normally I’m not, I love shooting, but it was because…

The director admitted she was ‘kept up’ by a pivotal scene revealing Nanisca and Nawi’s relationship (Picture: Ilze Kitshoff/Sony Pictures via AP)

‘For me to take on the film and to talk about before – and everything this film was, an historical epic and the beauty of shooting something like that – what truly connected me to this film was the mother-daughter story, and this guttural connection I had to that. And the truth of that.’

Opening up further, she added: ‘The story of this young girl being born of rape was my own story, and that was something that I had infused into the script and into the dialogue. So to watch this scene – it was like reliving my truth, which was something I had kept secret, honestly, until the film.’

Prince-Bythewood, who boasts a career spanning more than 20 years and has directed films like The Secret Life of Bees and The Old Guard, was adopted by her computer programmer and nurse parents, Bob and Maria Prince, when she was three weeks old.

(L-R) Prince-Bythewood with stas Viola Davis and Thuso Mbedu (Picture: Getty)

The Woman King also stars Lashana Lynch and Sheila Atim (Picture: Ilze Kitshoff/Sony Pictures)

She recalled also taking about similar stories from Rwanda with Davis during their rehearsals for The Woman King.

‘I shared some stories of women from Rwanda who had gone through that – obviously rape was used as a military tool, so thousands of children were born of rape – so to be able to share those stories with Viola, the other side of it; I just knew an audience had to believe this scene, they had to believe the depth of the scene.’

The Emmy nominee remembered the physical impact that shooting the scene then had on her.

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She explained: ‘As soon as we did the first take all that tightness just went away because the actors, they just understood it on a guttural level and it was such an incredible thing to see, these two feed off each other, and every take was slightly different because they were just truly in it and truly listening to each other.’

‘It’s an amazing thing to see your actors, if you’re writing from a personal place, to embody your truth in such an incredible way that actually, honestly, shooting that scene was healing for me.’

The Woman King is available to rent or buy on Prime Video and the Sky Store now.

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