UB Spotlight + Extended Preview: Regina King Talks ‘Shirley’

Regina King returns as “Shirley” March 22nd on Netflix.

Written and directed by John Ridley, “Shirley” tells the story of the first black Congresswoman and political icon, Shirley Chisholm, and her trailblazing run for president of the U.S.

It chronicles her audacious, boundary-breaking 1972 presidential campaign.

In 1968, the Brooklyn native made history as the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress.

“Shirley” also stars Lance Reddick, Lucas Hedges, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Christina Jackson, Michael Cherrie, Dorian Crossmond Missick, Amirah Vann, W. Earl Brown, Brad James, and Reina King, with André Holland and Terrence Howard.

Check Out The UB Extended Preview!

A Conversation with Star and Producer Regina King

This has long been a passion project for you and your sister — and fellow producer and co-star — Reina, which you’ve been working toward for 15 years. What was the original catalyst to tell Shirley’s story?

Reina and I first decided that Shirley’s story was one that was important to tell when we realized separately and together how many people did not know who Shirley was — and these were people that we would just assume would know. After so many times of having that experience, we thought, “Wait a minute, this is not right. When you hear just even the last name Chisholm, you should think Shirley.”

We set out to tell her story and early on we worked with a team of writers including Sonya Winton who was very good at giving us even a deeper history lesson on who Shirley was and what she had been doing since she ran for president. Then Sonya and her partner Jonathan Kidd’s career started blossoming and my career and Reina’s career started blossoming so we kept having these moments where we’d be working on it and then life things would happen. It was all good things but that meant the Shirley project would lie dormant for a bit, and then we’d come back to it. During the third season of American Crime it started coming back up. Reina and I just never stopped knowing that we were meant to tell Shirley’s story. I told Reina I was going to ask John Ridley if he would be interested. I remember standing by the trailers outside and asking John, and he was like “Me? Absolutely!”

Although it was likely frustrating chipping away for all this time, do you feel like you were better equipped to play Shirley by the time you actually got to do it?

I absolutely feel that where I was at the beginning of this 15 year journey to where I was once cameras started rolling, I was a different woman. I had lived more life. I had a better understanding of just what makes us different as human beings. I guess I would say I had done a little more anthropological study in life and that definitely lent itself to playing Shirley.

It helped me understand better how you embrace the totality of a person— the things that maybe you love so much about a person are also the things that really get on your nerves about the person. Those two things can exist at the same time. Having a better understanding about humanity over those 15 years prepared me more. And then also just looking at the political landscape, just how much from the moment Reina and I decided to set out on this journey of telling the story to where we were when we actually started shooting, it had not changed and also made us wonder “What would Shirley be saying right now?”

From her intelligence to her attitude to her accent, Shirley was a complex woman. What did you love about playing her?

I love that in this career that I’ve been in for 30-plus years that I was faced with the biggest challenge ever with trying to embody this woman who is probably one of the most unique beings I’ve ever studied. Just her dialect alone was terrifying. I had an amazing dialect coach and we both collected a lot of audio and video. Listening to her I realized her accent would change so much. Having spent time in Barbados and New York, she would sound Bajan sometimes and other times like someone from Brooklyn and other times she sounded more scholarly, and sometimes it was a mix of all three because that’s who she is.

In working with the dialect coach we said “You’re not trying to mimic Shirley. What we need to do is find where Regina and Shirley intersect,” because that’s what Shirley was always doing, she was always finding how she was going to meet whoever she was talking to where they were. So we studied: When does Shirley lean more into the Bajan? When does Shirley lean more into speaking faster? When does she slow it down? Because I promise you, all of the videos and audio that you see of Shirley, you will see so many different sounds and looks. When does she stand more erect? When does she slouch? You know it’s just all of those little things that were terrifying going into it. Hopefully, I achieved it. But along the way, in little moments when I started to feel like I was out of gas, I felt Shirley coming from somewhere saying, “I got you,” and lifting me up. It was a challenge, but I felt like I had angels protecting me.

Oftentimes, important historical figures are depicted as very serious and grave but you all really made an effort to show us that Shirley could be funny and feisty and flawed and the challenges she faced as a woman pushing for progress even when that progress wasn’t happening in her own home. How did you and John calibrate that tone?

The beautiful thing about John Ridley is that he is a bit of a historian, and it’s very important to him to get all of the information as he’s writing because the nuanced moments in the telling of a story are huge. If you don’t have those, then you might as well read a book, right? That’s the reason people show up to watch storytelling, because if the storytellers are getting it right, they’re getting into the interior of the characters and not just the things that we can easily Google or read about.

In all of the research that we had done on Shirley and the people that we got to talk to who actually knew Shirley, the one thing they all said was that she loved to dance and that she was funny. And Barbara Lee and Shirley’s goddaughter told us that they’ve never seen anyone that can curse someone out so well without using curse words. That’s just brilliant. I mean, to receive that from two different people, as a filmmaking team, we were like, “Okay, we have got to make sure people can see everything that makes Shirley, Shirley.” So often we just see the video clips where she’s an orator and she’s having to stand up to someone or speak all the way to the back of the room. In Shirley, you can see her as this little woman, as a person and that orator is just such a small part of who she is. So the quiet moments were just as if not more important than the big speech moments.

Speaking of Congresswoman Barbara Lee — whom Christina Jackson plays in the film — how important was it to have her visit the set? As a close friend of Shirley’s, did you feel like she gave you her blessing?

Having Barbara Lee come and visit the set was definitely like she was giving us Shirley’s blessing in a lot of ways. I mean, they had such a beautiful relationship and Barbara represents just how someone can come into your life and not only inspire you, but kind of put a light bulb in your head to let you know, “Oh, this is what I’m supposed to be doing. There is something within me that I have to give way beyond just this moment.” Shirley lit that fire in Barbara by example, and then by their relationship. The fact that Barbara Lee is still making moves that affect our lives as a Congresswoman is huge, and to kno that it started with meeting Shirley that one time. So we looked at this film as a rallying cry and to show, by example, a snapshot of this relationship between these two women and how it’s continued to nourish us.

This was one of Lance Reddick’s final roles before his untimely passing. Did you want to say anything about working with and getting to know him?

Yes, absolutely. I’ve gotten the opportunity to work with Lance Reddick twice. I got the opportunity to direct him,and then I got the opportunity to have him as a scene partner. Throughout this journey, the entire cast just surrounded me to help me just get through the days, and Lance really was a spirit that knew how to lift me up. He also helped me to remember to laugh.

I’m so grateful that I had that and I’m even more grateful that he said yes, because while we still are seeing this good-looking Lance playing the character of Mac, it’s a different role for him, and I think it’s a role that he was proud of. There are moments in the film where I see Shirley and Mac looking at each other and I see Lance and Regina looking at each other, and that’s what will always be on film for me. I’ll always have that. I’m speaking selfishly, I know, to watch Lance cap off this amazing career that he had is a gift for me.

What do you think Shirley would think of Shirley?

I hope that she would embrace it. I hope that she would understand that the reason for doing it was to honor her and also just to hopefully teach people who did not realize that there was this little Bajan, Brooklyn-born woman who inspired so many to move beyond their comfort zones, to move beyond what life presents. So often we only do things because we’ve seen someone else do it. That’s what lets us know that it’s possible, as opposed to creating our own possibilities. Shirley was a maverick in that space. So, hopefully she would understand that that’s the reason for telling this story. Part of me feel like she would embrace it because we made the choice to tell a slice of her life and not the whole story from beginning to the end. A person with a life that rich, it’s really hard to tell a cradle to grave. We thought it was better to talk about this lightning in a bottle moment in American history. That is what Shirley was and we hope we brought her unbought and unbossed spirit to making this film.

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was the first African American woman in Congress (1968) and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties (1972). Her motto and title of her autobiography — “Unbought and Unbossed” — illustrates her outspoken advocacy for women and minorities during her seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 30, 1924, Chisholm was the oldest of four daughters to immigrant parents Charles St. Hill, a factory worker from Guyana, and Ruby Seale St. Hill, a seamstress from Barbados. She graduated from Brooklyn Girls’ High in 1942 and from Brooklyn College cum laude in 1946, where she won prizes on the debate team. Although professors encouraged her to consider a political career, she replied that she faced a “double handicap” as both Black and female.

Initially, Chisholm worked as a nursery school teacher. In 1949, she married Conrad Q. Chisholm, a private investigator (they divorced in 1977). She earned a master’s degree from Columbia University in early childhood education in 1951. By 1960, she was a consultant to the New York City Division of Day Care. Ever aware of racial and gender inequality, she joined local chapters of the League of Women Voters, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Urban League, as well as the Democratic Party club in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

In 1964, Chisholm ran for and became the second African American in the New York State Legislature. After court-ordered redistricting created a new, heavily Democratic, district in her neighborhood, in 1968 Chisholm sought—and won—a seat in Congress. There, “Fighting Shirley” introduced more than 50 pieces of legislation and championed racial and gender equality, the plight of the poor, and ending the Vietnam War. She was a co-founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971, and in 1977 became the first Black woman and second woman ever to serve on the powerful House Rules Committee. That year she married Arthur Hardwick Jr., a New York State legislator.

Discrimination followed Chisholm’s quest for the 1972 Democratic Party presidential nomination. She was blocked from participating in televised primary debates, and after taking legal action, was permitted to make just one speech. Still, students, women, and minorities followed the “Chisholm Trail.” She entered 12 primaries and garnered 152 of the delegates’ votes (10% of the total)—despite an underfinanced campaign and contentiousness from the predominantly male Congressional Black Caucus.

Chisholm retired from Congress in 1983. She taught at Mount Holyoke College and co-founded the National Political Congress of Black Women. In 1991 she moved to Florida, and later declined the nomination to become U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica due to ill health. Of her legacy, Chisholm said, “I want to be remembered as a woman … who dared to be a catalyst of change.”