'Being black in America requires emotional aerobics': Regina King on 'powder keg' movie One Night...

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'Being black in America requires emotional aerobics': Regina King on 'powder keg' movie One Night in Miami
Steve Rose

The Oscar-winning Beale Street actor on success and her sharply topical feature debut, a civil rights-era film that coincided with the explosive rise of Black Lives Matter


(Guardian UK) To say Regina King is “having a moment” feels a little inappropriate, considering that she is 35 years into her career. But it also feels like an understatement. In the past five years she has won an Oscar, four Emmys and numerous other awards for her performances in a string of acclaimed titles, including Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk, the prescient comic-book miniseries Watchmen and the Netflix race-crime drama Seven Seconds. As well as marching her down several miles of red carpet, the flurry of attention has catapulted her into a new echelon of star power.

Now she is also making waves as a director. Her debut feature, One Night in Miami, was the first film directed by an African American woman ever to screen at the Venice film festival. The resultant acclaim, combined with the resonance of the civil rights-era story, puts it in contention for the upcoming awards season; she is considered a shoo-in for the best director shortlists. Everything King touches seems to be turning to gold right now. What’s her secret?

“Oh, man, I don’t know that it’s a secret,” she says on the phone from Los Angeles. “I think two things that are consistent is that I enjoy the art form. I enjoy storytelling. I was lucky to have a talent for something that I guess … what is that thing? If you can make your hobby your career you should never get bored with it. I love what I do. I love the discoveries that come along with it. So that, coupled with hard work, creates, I guess, what they call luck – you know, preparation and opportunity.”

....(snip)....

So now King has the courage and the power, and, she points out, the wisdom, to make a difference. In terms of the Malcolm X/Sam Cooke debate in One Night in Miami – direct, confrontational activism versus longer-term change from within – she is really doing both. She is evidently choosing roles and stories with a worthwhile agenda, as an actor, director and producer (as well as One Night in Miami, she produced and directed TV pilot The Finest, on five African American sisters in the New York police force). ............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jan/08/regina-king-one-night-miami-oscar-winning-beale-street-actor-black-lives-matter?