In September audiences will get a look at Viola Davis’s The Woman King. The historical epic is based on a real group of women in Africa, features fighting in early firearm periods, and, now, director Gina Prince-Bythewood says other history influences it, too.
Prince-Bythewood makes the comments in an article published by Empire today. Essentially, the film’s battle scenes took inspiration from Braveheart and Gladiator and Prince-Bythewood says audiences will get to see the underdog tone they channeled, but for women instead.
“It felt like our Braveheart. Braveheart is one of my favourite movies. But we don’t get to see ourselves like that. I just thought about all those great battles in Braveheart or Gladiator. And now we get to do ours. On paper, it’s a ten-page sequence. We had thousands of extras closing with each other in an epic David versus Goliath battle that’s one of my favourite sequences in the film.”
The report goes on to quote star Lashana Lynch. Lynch says she did her own stunts completely in the piece and had says she and her double had to support each other, as if they did not, one risked falling ill and potentially letting the other person down.
“We lifted each other up on days when we quite literally wanted to vomit, but knew we weren’t allowed to. Nobody wanted to let the side down.”
The Woman King opens Sept. 16. It is inspired by the Dahomey Amazons who existed in what in present-day is the nation of Benin. The last person claimed to have been one of the group, which was the only known all-female army in history, died in 1979 at well-over 100 years old.
Published: Aug 3, 2022 10:58 am