Directors Gina Prince-Bythewood and Halle Berry on Their “Very Small Sisterhood”

Halle Berry and Gina Prince-Bythewood are well aware that as Black female directors in Hollywood, they’re members of a small club—or, as Prince-Bythewood put it, a “very small sisterhood.” The two had a candid conversation about their differing paths and approaches to filmmaking for Vanity Fair’s latest series, What Is Cinema?, which puts directors in conversation with each other about their craft. 

“At the end of the day, I want to move people,” said Prince-Bythewood, the director of Love & Basketball, Beyond the Lights, and the recent blockbuster hit The Woman King, starring Viola Davis as the leader of a real-life army of women warriors in West Africa. Of making that film, Prince-Bythewood told Berry, “I always wanted to do our Braveheart,” noting how Black women directing and starring in action films is “disrupting” the genre. “To be able to see ourselves as warriors, as fighters, as heroes, it’s so rare.”

Despite her decades of experience in front of the camera as an Oscar-winning actor, Berry said that directing wasn’t initially on her radar. “I didn’t want to be a director—[well], I think I always wanted to, but not in this moment,” she said in regard to her directorial debut, Netflix’s Bruised. In addition to directing the film, Berry starred as Jackie Justice, a disgraced MMA fighter and single mother. “I had such a monster role to play—to direct myself for the first time, I mean, I’m not psychotic. Nobody would chose to do [that],” Berry said with a laugh. “But it chose me, and it was a story that sat so deeply inside my body.” 

Prince-Bythewood agreed that she shares Berry’s need to viscerally connect with whatever material she chooses to direct. “It’s really simple. It’s a guttural connection. And it’s have to,” she said. A lover of historical epics, Prince-Bythewood saw her career moving in the direction of The Woman King even before the script came her way, with Oscar winner Davis already attached. “You can’t go wrong there,” added Berry.