It took Regina King 15 years to make a movie about Shirley Chisholm
On Q, the actress explains why now was the perfect time to release her new biopic
When Tom Power last spoke to Regina King on Q in 2023, he asked her which three people she'd like to sit down with.
One of the people that the actress-director-producer named was Shirley Chisholm, the first Black congresswoman and the first Black person to run for president.
A year later, King returned to Q to tell Power about the new movie that she produced and stars in: Shirley, a biopic about the 1972 presidential campaign of the woman she wanted to chat with.
"It's like a full-circle moment," she says.
King's fascination with Chisholm began in the third or fourth grade during Black History Month. Her classmate read about Chisholm as the first Black woman to win a seat in Congress, not even mentioning her presidential run. The presentation was no more than two minutes long, but Chisholm's picture stayed in King's mind.
"Seeing her stuck with me," she says. "I knew she was a first."
A few years later, King's mom told her and her sister, Reina King, more about Chisholm's achievements. In their teens and 20s, the King sisters discovered that people didn't know much about Chisholm. In fact, many people didn't even know her name.
When the two sisters started building their production company, Royal Ties Productions, they knew they wanted to make a movie about Chisholm.
"Shirley's legacy needs to be honoured," King says. "It needs to be known how much she is a part of the American fabric."
Fifteen years after that conversation, Regina and Reina King are bringing Shirley to screens around the world.
The movie was supposed to be released in 2023, but King pushed it to this year.
"That was by no mistake," she says. "[2024] is a presidential election year."
King wants this movie to remind people how much one person can achieve — even when many people and systems are against them.
Every time Chisholm ran for political office, she was the first. She was the first Black woman in U.S. Congress in 1967, only two years after Black women won the right to vote. She then was the first Black woman to run for president in 1972, two years before women were allowed to obtain credit cards without their husbands.
Yet during Chisholm's time as a congresswoman, she became respected by those who were against her. For instance, she worked with Republican Bob Dole — who King calls the "whitest white m[a]n ever" — to expand the food stamp program and reduce child malnutrition.
Though Chisholm didn't win her presidential race, she showed others that they could do it. By making Shirley, King feels that she and her sister are doing the same.
"I feel like Reina and I are an example of what is possible," she says. "If we inspire anyone to push outside of their comfort zone, to make a dream a reality, that's just success on top of success."
The full interview with Regina King is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Regina King produced by Glory Omatayo
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
