King spent 15 years trying to get Chisholm film made
“Shirley” had begun just weeks before his passing. Production eventually wrapped after a hiatus. Then she went on one herself. Now, two years later, King has gradually reentered Hollywood’s whirlpool while making sure to not get sucked under. When she appeared during the 2024 awards season, it was both strategic and sentimental: She was there for filmmaker Ava DuVernay, Oscar winner Angela Bassett and Oscar nominee Danielle Brooks.
“One, I show up for art,” King said. “Two, I show up for art that moves me. Three, I show up for my friends, because they show up for me. Four, because I was just starting to come back into it, they all felt like spaces that I could control.”
When I sat down with King last month to chat before a screening of “Shirley” at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, her old press-junket muscles were just warming up. She’d presented at the Oscars just a few days earlier. That same week, she’d be off to New York for an exclusive sit-down with “Good Morning America” anchor Robin Roberts, one of her first talking about Ian. It’s been an effort.
“I’m not going to lie,” King said, explaining how hard the promo push can be. She often salts the road for her thoughts with phrases like “to be quite honest” and “in all honesty” or “I’m a firm believer in.” Going with your gut is a career choice for King, whose divergent roles fall into an almost divine order.
The same goes for “Shirley,” a film King spent 15 years trying to get made, about the first Black congresswoman’s Hail Mary run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972. It’s a public-private story that almost eerily mirrors
where King is at in this moment.
“In telling her story, it was (important) to show how awesome and unique of a politician she was, a strategist, but to show the humanity,” King said. “To show that she’s a woman, that she has these emotions and all of the things that come along with just being a spiritual being having a human experience.”
Those were the bullet points King and her sister, Reina, who produced the film together under their Royal Ties banner, gave Oscar winner John Ridley when they tapped him as writer and director. Ridley, who knew King from her time on his drama “American Crime,” asked the sisters what type of
story they wanted to tell. Was it a cradle-to-grave piece? A political drama? A triumphant immigrant story? They wanted a human story.
One with a real woman at its center. “I think roles choose the actor,” King said. “We may think we’re choosing the role, but I think it’s kind of predestined, you know?”
The first time King heard the name Shirley Chisholm was around the fourth grade at Castle Heights Elementary School near Culver City, Calif., where the actress was bused from her home some 6 miles away in the affluent Black neighborhood of Windsor Hills. Probably in February. “If you’re lucky, Shirley Chisholm was part of the Black History
Month curriculum,” she said. Later, she’d learn a bit more about the groundbreaking congresswoman from her mom, a teacher. But not the whole story.
“If I’m being completely honest, it wasn’t until my sister and I started doing the research to try to determine what part of her story to tell when it really started sinking in,” King said. Chisholm was not only the first Black woman in Congress. She was also a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the only woman in the inaugural group. She introduced 50 pieces of legislation in the House of Representatives, including successful expansions of the food stamp program
and increases to minimum wage. She served another decade in Congress after her historic primary campaign to run for president.
Historian Zinga A. Fraser, a consultant on “Shirley,” said the film provides a framework for Chisholm’s empathy: “Black political women and Chisholm explicitly have never been framed with being soft and compassionate.”
“You can be fierce and bold and radical and at times angry, but also soft-spoken and quiet and thoughtful and strategic,” Fraser said. “The film allows audiences to get a 360-degree view of a Black woman in the 1970s operating in a harsh world.”
Regina and Reina glommed onto the idea of making a Chisholm biopic — the first, despite the representative’s many accomplishments — in the late aughts. Reina suggested that, while shooting “American Crime,” King feel out Ridley. King floated the idea over lunch on set. “And he was like, ‘Are you serious? Me?’” she recalled. But before they could make it Hollywood official, Viola Davis announced in 2018 that she was working on a Chisholm biopic with Amazon Studios. King decided to bow out.
“She’s just genius. So I felt like, ‘OK, if she does it first, I know it’ll be in good hands,’” King said. “But I was still licking my paws.” But then Davis’s Chisholm project didn’t move forward. King pounced. “We didn’t look back at that point. I feel like Shirley was calling us.”
King’s portrayal of Chisholm is tight and fiery. The congresswoman is compact with passion, packing righteous indignation in perfectly coifed hair and a matching skirt suit. She is laser-focused but loving. Demanding but never loud. There’s little of her private life in the film, which zeroes in on her 1972 presidential bid. Yet the relationship between Chisholm and her sister Muriel is intimately rendered.
Other actresses auditioned for that part, but Ridley couldn’t land on who to play Chisholm’s younger sister and reluctant supporter. When the director asked Reina, who hadn’t acted since she was a child, her first reaction was no. Then she called Regina for her take.
“Reina is my anchor. Reina is our company’s anchor,” King said. “And so selfishly, I was like, ‘You going to be able to take your producer hat off and put your wig on?’” So her younger sister decided to do it. “And Reina was freaking good, man. She killed it,” said King.