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Gina Prince-Bythewood and Kasi Lemmons on Filming ‘Women of the Movement’: “It Was a Collective Mourning and a Collective Fight”

Gina Prince-Bythewood and Kasi Lemmons have had remarkably entwined careers as filmmakers. Both broke out with acclaimed debut features near the end of the 20th century: Love & Basketball (2000) and Eve’s Bayou (1997), respectively. Today, they’re both hard at work on their upcoming sixth movies, the former with The Woman King and the latter with I Wanna Dance With Somebody.

They took breaks from their moviemaking to each direct an episode (Prince-Bythewood, the pilot; Lemmons, the finale) of the first season of the ABC anthology series Women of the Movement, the inaugural iteration of which focuses on Mamie Till-Mobley (Adrienne Warren), mother of Emmett Till, who was spurred to take action in the fight for civil rights after her 14-year-old son was brutally kidnapped, tortured and murdered after being accused of offending a white woman in a grocery store.

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The project deals with incredibly painful, horrific subject matter, and was shot on location in rural Mississippi in the midst of the pandemic and the aftermath of the George Floyd protests. Approaching such a vital story, one that had never before been committed to film, required an intense sensitivity and vulnerability that few directors, Prince-Bythewood and Lemmons among them, are able to pull off. The longtime friends and contemporaries spoke to THR about just how they handled such a daunting task.

I thought it would be interesting to start with how you became familiar with each other’s work, and how it has impacted your own filmmaking.

GINA PRINCE-BYTHEWOOD When I saw Eve’s Bayou, it was one of those movies that changed my life. One, to know that a Black woman did that film, I was like, “Oh, we can do Oscar-level work like that.” It just switched something for me. I was so blown away by the film I saw it a couple of times. When Love & Basketball got the green light, I ran into Kasi. I mentioned that I was about to do my first film and Kasi was so warm and gracious and supportive. And just made me feel like: “Don’t be scared. You’re here for a reason, you can do this.” I’ve never forgotten how she made me feel. And from that moment forward, when I meet young filmmakers, I always try to do the same for them, what she did for me.

KASI LEMMONS Gina and I just connected at a really important point in our careers. We were both making our first film, and then we had children. So then that became: “How do you navigate this as a mother?” We both had a couple of kids, and that became a whole conversation: “How do we do this?” This is one of, I would say, my cementing friendships in the industry, that lets me know, when I have a bad day … it gives me the strength, in all honesty, to continue working, just to know that I’m not alone, knowing Gina is there.

How did this project come to each of you?

PRINCE-BYTHEWOOD I knew [series creator] Marissa Jo Cerar; we hired her, my husband [Reggie Rock Bythewood] and I, for our show Shots Fired. Emmett Till, his picture was on the walls of our offices, he was our angel. I base my decisions on what I have to do, because there are a thousand things I want to do. But if you’re going to be away from your family, if you’re going to put your whole into something, it has to be: “I have to do this.” We wanted to tell their story. It hadn’t been told before. We wanted to make sure we got it right. And I just felt compelled to tell the story. I knew I was only going to be able to direct the pilot. I literally was like, “Could we get Kasi to direct the finale?” Because the finale is a movie in itself. I just couldn’t think of anybody else that we could entrust with that final hour and a half. What happened with Emmett, I didn’t think there was anyone else that could do it other than Kasi, her way with actors, the way she gets incredible performances. How cinematic her camera is.

LEMMONS It was a big decision. The whole thing is painful, but the finale is particularly painful. I thought about it hard, but it really was Gina’s and M.J.’s involvement that made me want to go on this journey with them. I knew it would be something special with us doing it, that we were all doing it for the same reasons: to get this story told, to get Mamie’s story told and to make a statement that really needs to be made.

Dealing with something so traumatic and horrifying, how do you protect the actors and everyone involved and make sure that everyone feels safe?

PRINCE-BYTHEWOOD For my hour, the toughest thing to shoot was his kidnapping. I knew I wanted to play it in real time. That was just my immediate thought: Play it in real time, play it in one shot, light it as it would have been, pitch dark except for a flashlight, put the audience into this. A 14-year-old boy, put us in his head. That day was so tough. I remember starting the day talking to the crew, and saying, “Look, we are playing truth, the actors are going to be living this over and over and over again. We cannot take it lightly, what they have to channel to do this.” I asked for everyone to have grace and quiet. There’s no joking. This is just not a place to joke around or be light — the actors need to know that they are safe in this environment, that what they are doing is for a reason.

LEMMONS The production was very careful to have support counselors for any difficult scenes. Somebody available for the crew and the cast to talk to was very, very important. As directors, of course, we take care with the actors to make sure that they understand where they are, and what they have to do, to know that as much as we’re asking them to do that, we’re there with them, and that they’re not alone, and that we’re there to create a safe environment for them to be so brave in. I had to go through the scenes [of the murder and torture] with Cedric [Joe, who plays Emmett]. By the time we got to the finale, I said, “Who do you want there?” He wanted his mother there. But he also wanted Adrienne there, which I thought was very sweet. Adrienne wasn’t working that day. She didn’t have makeup on or anything, but she came there for C.J. You often have tunnel vision as a director and you become very worried about one thing, and I was very focused on C.J.

You made the show during the pandemic and the George Floyd protests. How did the context of the modern day influence the show?

LEMMONS It’s so interesting, because it was haunted. I mean, that was my feeling, just being in that part of the South. But being in Mississippi, in the areas where it happened, and the courthouse where the trial was, there were ghosts and a very frightening feeling, but also a kind of hallowed ground — our history is in this land, and in the soil. It’s a brutal history. And then the pandemic forces a certain kind of isolation. You’re self-driving, for instance, to locations that were sometimes very far away. Everything about it was difficult and interesting, and very, very timely. We’d all been isolated for a while, so this kind of coming together was amazing. George Floyd, in the aftermath of the protests, was still very much on everybody’s mind. It gave us a lot of drive and focus in telling this story, and it was fueled by this kind of necessity born out of everything that we were going through.

PRINCE-BYTHEWOOD We shot at many of the real locations. And there’s no denying that the history in Mississippi was incredibly violent. You still feel that in the fact that we were shooting this story that took place not that long ago. I’m passing Confederate flags every single day on the way to work, and my desire to get out and just light them on fire, like every single day, and Trump signs — you understand where you’re shooting. It was a tough thing. The place where I was staying at during filming was right on the Tallahatchie River, which Emmett was thrown into. There’s a sign commemorating Emmett Till, and it just recently was encased in bulletproof glass because it was still getting shot up by gunfire every single year. Every time they put up a new sign, people would come and shoot it. That’s the environment today. There’s nothing that makes what we did a museum piece, and I think that we all brought what we were feeling at that time, what we feel oftentimes, into that story. [The actors] were bringing what they feel every day into it. It was a collective mourning as we told the story, but also a collective fight, that we’re doing this because things need to change.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.