I believe courage has no gender
The Woman King’s stars and its director tell RACHAEL DAVIS about hidden history and female strength in the action-packed historical epic
YOU’VE probably never heard of the Agojie, a fierce, ruthless, powerful all-female unit of warriors who protected the African Kingdom of Dahomey in the 19th Century.
The fact that the story of such an incredible band of fighters, rather than becoming universally legendary, has largely been lost to history is precisely the reason why director Gina Prince-Bythewood wanted to turn the story of the Agojie into an epic action film, The Woman King.
“Because we’ve never heard of it before, never seen it before,” is Gina’s response when I ask her why she wanted to bring this story to screen.
“It’s just a good story. It’s the classic David and Goliath, yet these are women and female warriors, in that place of David, conquering Goliath. It’s everything that I would want to see as an audience.”
The Woman King follows the journey of General Nanisca, played by Oscar winner Viola Davis, as she trains the next generation of Agojie recruits to become fierce warriors who can protect their kingdom in battle against an enemy set on destroying their way of life.
Among them is Nawi, played by Thuso Mbedu, an orphaned girl whose adoptive father, fed up with her resisting his attempts to marry her off, delivers her to the palace. She can now finally become
what she’s always wanted to be – an Agojie warrior.
At the time, the Agojie were the most feared warriors in West Africa. The Dahomey Kingdom, which is in the territory we now recognise as Benin, was one of the wealthiest kingdoms, and had a culture which significantly valued women and had a gender balance in its social structure.
All official roles were balanced by a male and female leader, all the way up to the ruler. The king would bestow the title of Kpojito, ‘Woman King’, to a female equal.
“I actually think there’s incredible balance,” says Star Wars star John Boyega, 30, who plays the king of Dahomey.
“The men and the women are there in the court sharing ideas about what’s to be done for the people. On the battlefield, you see that the men are working with the main artillery, and then the women do the hand to hand combat.
“I love the fact that they did that, because I wish society would reflect that a lot more.”
In making The Woman King, Gina says she wanted to redefine the action genre – traditionally a very white and very masculine category of fims – by spotlighting black female strength in the thrilling action scenes.
“I love disrupting genre,” the 53-year-old director smiles, “and oftentimes, you can do it
just by who you cast
and who you put in the story you want to tell within that.
“I love action and, for me, the best action sequences are character and story-driven. I knew I wanted to bring that, which means having the actors really do the fighting and really do the stunts, which is really, really hard, but really exciting when it works.
“But also the mindset that I had, and my incredible fight and stunt coordinator, Danny Hernandez, had – we can’t make the action be ‘good enough because it’s women’. It just had to be good. That was always the bar.
“And I still love watching these battles, and watching these women fight, because it really happened. These women really beat men.”
In order to create these brutally realistic battle scenes, the stars of The Woman King had to undergo a strict training regimen.
“We had five hours of training a day for three months before we shot,” explains Viola, 57.
“Hour and a half of weightlifting, sprinting – Thuso [Mbedu] had to do a lot of sprinting. And then three and a half hours of martial arts.
“Choreography, with me and Thuso working side by side, choreographing scenes where we were taking down probably 15 men at a time.
“And then the five-month shoot in South Africa, where we continued to train. Yeah, that was training basically for eight months.”
Often, women in action films are stylised to be lithe rather than overtly strong, and the costuming can be sexualised. The fact that The Woman King avoided this pitfall was a breath of fresh air for its stars.
“We were here with the stealth-like clothes that made sense, were breathable and were incredible and practical and great to work in – which is exactly why women in the military wear what they wear,” says James
Bond star Lashana Lynch, 34, who plays Izogie.
“Comfortable clothes and support in the right places so that you can do your best work, so you can show up to work and feel good about yourself. And we were just women being at work.
“That was beautiful, not being sexualised or hyper-sexualised.”
The Woman King’s presentation of strong, black female warriors makes a powerful point about femininity and what it means to be a woman
“These women are warriors, it’s innately in them,” says Gina.
“I believe that courage has no gender, yet, from birth, so many of us are taught to be quiet or to be smaller, to not be seen and not be heard. And it’s just not who we are. We are not the weaker sex.
“To be able to look upon the screen and see these women, and these warriors – and they’re not superheroes, these were real women – I feel like you can be inspired by them and aspire to be them.”
“And also what it says is how sometimes we have to lead in pain,” adds Viola.
“How sometimes we’re fighting and we’re going through our day, and we’re still doing our job, that we’re broken, that we can experience trauma, and that every day sometimes you have to take, step-bystep, day-by-day, strides to survive.
“But there is admiration in the fight. And that’s the thing that you see in the movie, that we just continued to fight, we continue to want to matter. And I think that’s a real
feminine strength.”
I actually think there’s incredible balance... The men and the women are there in the court sharing ideas about what’s to be done for the people John Boyega on Dahomey’s society
The Woman King is showing in cinemas now