People often ask me if I feel discriminated against as a black female director. I don't. I'm actually offered a ton of stuff. But I only want to direct what I write. And I prefer to focus on black female characters. What's most important to me is to put characters up onscreen who are not perfect, but who are human and flawed.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

Categorized in : People Character Writing

Be passionate about your [movie] material, because you're going to have to overcome a lot of "No's," and it's that passion that fuels the fight.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

passion fighting overcoming

A classic is a classic for a reason. Let's try to create new classics. The idea of repeating ourselves drives me a little crazy.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

crazy trying ideas

We have two boys. After George Zimmerman was found not guilty of killing Trayvon Martin, we had to explain to our older son, who was 12 at the time, how that could happen. Instead of hugging and consoling him, my husband pulled out a documentary about Emmett Till and showed it to him and started to talk about how the justice system works in this country - and how it often doesn't. From that conversation, our son wrote a short story about Trayvon Martin going to heaven to meet Emmett Till.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

husband country son

I write to music, and Nina Simone is always on my playlist to write to. I mean, shes inspiring. She's truthful and real and raw.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

real writing mean

I want us to have it all, love and career. It's a struggle sometime to achieve that, but I love the struggle.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

careers struggle want

I write to music, so every script I have has its own playlist. Music just opens me up to the emotions that I'm writing.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

scripts emotion writing

My parents are amazing. When I said I wanted to go into film, they didn't understand it, but they were incredibly supportive. But growing up, I absolutely did have that feeling of, "Wow, somebody just gave me up." That was infused in The Secret Life of Bees too - the protagonist wanting unconditional love from her dead but much-imagined mother.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

growing-up unconditional-love mother

I grew up with white parents and until after college, it was a lot of confusion, especially because I grew up in an all-white area. So I never looked around and saw anyone who looked like me.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

confusion college white

In film school, I knew I wanted to be a director, but I found out pretty damn quickly that nobody was just going to hand me a script to direct.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

directors hands school

Even if someone doesn't look like you or you don't know people like this in your real life, you get to know them and you get to see their humanity and you get to empathize with them. Our hope is that through empathy that can spark change. We hope people start talking to each other and our show sparks conversation because we need to start talking to each other, not at each other.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

empathy real people

I thought that the R&B / Hip-Hop world really hasn't been explored on film and there's some issues that we're going through right now. It's in a very dangerous place , for women especially, both in terms of the songs that men are singing about. You know, R&B used to be a safe place for women and now it just seems like the songs coming out are so angry but also what women have to come out with. You have to get noticed. You see, it's like a script to follow. You come out hyper sexualized but what happens when you can't pull back from that. That's not authentic to yourself.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

issues song men

Growing up the way I did, it was tough being one of only a few black people in the town and in school. What my upbringing got me is never feeling completely safe emotionally. Never knowing when something racial was going to pop off based on how I look. So that's something I've carried with me personally and is reflected in my work.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

growing-up knowing school

I want my work to always be hopeful, in the end. You're giving me two hours, and, in Shots Fired's case, 10 hours of your life. I don't want you to ever leave something I've done feeling worse than when you came in. I hope the work can be aspirational, and aspirational doesn't have to be corny at all.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

hopeful giving two

We think of Shots Fired as almost an autopsy of Ferguson that shows the events from every street in the house. And, in dealing with these two murders of a black victim and a white victim, we show the ways that communities and the media deal with victims differently based on race.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

white two thinking

Sports also teaches you that it's about the team, and the better your teammates are, the better they make you.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

teammate team sports

I'm very shy. But as a director and especially a female director, absolutely: How I used to walk on the court is how I walk on set. And I have to - I mean, I'm controlling 150, 200 people, and everything is on me.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

mean directors people

That's why Serena Williams is such a hero for me, because she's got such incredible swagger, and it's earned, and she can teach us that it is a good thing. The fact that she has been denigrated and called cocky - I mean, she's the best in the world! I hope my work can inspire other women to have that swagger and believe that they can have it all.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

hero mean believe

When killings of black by policeman happen, there's the victim, there's the family, there are the police, there are the politicians, and there is the community. Everybody is affected. Everybody has a point of view. We really wanted to dig into that and get to know all these different people that are changed by it.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

community views people

A Different World was run by black women, Debbie Allen and Yvette Lee Bowser. Lead writer Susie Fales-Hill was a hero of mine, because she was 28 when she was running one of the top shows on television. Going to work every day and seeing black women in charge made that normal to me.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

black hero running

I was so fortunate to get the opportunity to be a writers' apprentice on A Different World. It was my favorite show. So to go from watching Dwayne and Whitley to writing for Dwayne and Whitley was incredible.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

different writing opportunity