'The Woman King' Cast rule September for Essence
"Our togetherness is resistance. We are so much stronger together. I didn't know I had sisters in places. That's how it felt being on this set. My sisters have multiplied. And the beauty in that, and the beauty in what we have learned from each other because of our individual lived experiences, and the beauty that we present when we come together, we present what the world has never seen before. They love, they.. meaning the system, meaning everything else out there, loves to divide us, because if you divide us, then you can conquer us. Try to penetrate us. You won't because we have been through so much, and because in each and every way, we're not superheroes, we're actually warriors. We're Black women." - Adrienne Warren
The era of the Woman King is here, and its so much more than a film. Ahead of the projects theatre premier Viola Davis gives a behind the scenes look at the work, the doubts, struggles, trials and tribulations that went into making the film.
“Sometimes you’re in a project that’s bigger than you. You’re not thinking about box office. You’re not thinking about success. You’re thinking about transcendence.” says Davis, who covers the September digital cover of ESSENCE alongside The Woman King cast mates.
“The important part of this story is –I’m saying this now because it’s been almost eight years — I would say at the time it didn’t hit me. Not the story. The story hit me. The possibility of the story seeing light did not hit me. I think that’s important to say, because we are sort of thrust into this business. We’re sort of thrust in the world too, but that’s a whole different conversation. But we’re thrust in the business automatically assuming that something is not going to happen if it’s never been done before. There’s not going to be any support, no one’s going to want to do it, no studio’s going to give it the green light vote, and who would want to see me like that? And so I personally dropped it in my mind until Kathy Schulman came with the script by Dana Stevens and I was like, ‘Oh, okay.’”
Meet the women behind the movement and check out the full cover story on Essence.