“This story was one I had to do,” admits Gina Prince-Bythewood about directing the pilot episode of ABC‘s historical drama “Women of the Movement.” “That’s how I guide my decisions,” she declares, adding for our recent Q&A, “There’s so much stuff I want to do, but what do I have to do?” We talked with Prince-Bythewood as part of Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&A event with 2022 Emmy Awards contenders. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
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ABC’s “Women of the Movement” was created by Marissa Jo Cerar, based on the books “Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement” by Devery S. Anderson and “Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America” by Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson. The historical drama centers on Till-Mobley (Adrienne Warren), who devoted her life to seeking justice for her murdered son Emmett Till (Cedric Joe), and co-stars Tonya Pinkins, Ray Fisher, Gary Basaraba, Carter Jenkins and Emmy winner Glynn Turman. The six-episode limited series opens in 1955 Mississippi, in the lead up to Emmett’s vicious murder. The series then explores the aftermath of the crime, and Mabie’s fight for justice for Emmett, ensuring that his legacy would help spawn the civil rights movement in the Jim Crow South.
“The story of Emmett Till and his murder was a story that I’ve shared with my sons. I have two boys. When they were little, they knew about the story,” the director reveals. “So we felt like here we have this ability to tell a story that is still horrifyingly timely in this day and age, and we didn’t want to make it feel like a museum piece. We wanted people to be able to feel the urgency of the story,” she explains. “I think the hardest thing about telling this story is given the amount of research that I think we all do in taking on a project like this is that every time I read the story, every time I did the research, the ending didn’t change. As filmmakers, oftentimes we’re working in narrative and you get to create the ending. You get to create the story and where the character goes and how they behave. And in this case, Carolyn Bryant, this woman who lied about this 14-year old boy and what he did, which led to his murder; her actions never changed. These men’s actions never changed. And it was a striking thing to every day reflect on that and it absolutely drove our work every day that we had to get this right.”
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