Gina Prince-Bythewood photographed at the BFI in October
Laura Gallant / Buzzfeed
Back in 2000 Gina Prince-Bythewood delivered a critically acclaimed movie that would become a classic love story for a generation: Love and Basketball. Fourteen years later she wrote and directed Beyond the Lights, another sweeping love story, this time between a rising music star and the police officer who pulls her from the brink. Both these films were recently shown as part of the BFI's Love season, showcasing some of the most beautiful and memorable love stories in cinematic history. BuzzFeed spoke to the writer/director/producer while she was in London in October, ahead of a double bill of her films and a Q&A alongside her latest leading lady, British actor Gugu Mbatha-Raw. We talked about the roadmap of getting her films to the screen, the importance of talent pipelines, and building on success.
Laura Gallant / Buzzfeed
On her sometime catchphrase, "I write what I want to see", and how difficult it is to see the film through from page to screen.
Gina Prince-Bythewood: "I write what I want to see" absolutely drives me. I just distinctly recall never being able to go to the theatre and look up on the screen and see myself. It's easy for me to write these stories. Easy, as in this is what I want to do, but writing is extremely hard for me and very painful. I hear people who are like "Oh, I love to write! I write every day." And I'm jealous of that, because mine is like overeating and crying and self-loathing [smiles]. But in terms of what I write, it's very clear. I just want to put us on screen and show our diversity of thought and diversity of our lives. We are not a monolith. So I love writing us, and we especially need to see black women reflected up on screen. That's what I fight for. And it is an incredible fight, I'm not going to lie. Every single studio turned Love and Basketball down, and I'd just spent a year and a half writing the script. Beyond the Lights, every studio turned it down. Twice. And it's so soul-crushing when it's so clear in your head what the movie is and everyone's telling you no. But what keeps me going is the passion I have for the material, to see these films made. I mean, how many love stories of people of colour have come out in the last 15 years?
With Beyond the Lights, there were some studios that asked if I would cast Kaz as a white actor. And...why? [laughs] It's OK to show two people of colour onscreen loving each other. And then it's a matter of fighting to make sure the movie that's in my head is what's up on the screen. But I've been very fortunate. On Beyond the Lights, as hard as it was to get set up, it ended up in a place where they saw what I saw in Gugu, didn't question that I wanted Nate Parker for the male lead and left me alone and let me make the film that was in my head. I worked for scale [minimum pay set out by unions] on that movie, all the actors worked for scale, but it's worth it because we got to make the movie we wanted to make.
On making the character of Noni a south London girl, and how she came to cast Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Minnie Driver.
GPB: Well, this is a perfect example of casting changing your film. The character was written as American and Gugu came and auditioned with an American accent. I knew she was it in that audition and I just wanted to talk to her about her connection to the material. She dropped the American accent and as she was talking, I was thinking, This is so much more interesting. The film is so much about finding your authentic self, and I didn't want her to fake anything. And then I thought about Rihanna, who I dig, and she's special but also what makes her special is she's from Barbados.
In terms of the mother-daughter dynamic, the fact that these two came from London to America and just appropriated the blueprint – especially a white mother taking the blueprint used by black female artists to come out hypersexualised – I just thought it was really interesting to deal with, without having a big speech a