Bruised, following a disgraced MMA fighter’s return to the ring amid the unexpected return of the young son she gave up, premiered at Hollywood’s AFI Fest on Saturday night with star and first-time director Halle Berry.
In what she told The Hollywood Reporter was “one of the biggest challenges of my career,” Berry trained for months to become a champion-level fighter in “a big, meaty role,” while also learning how to step behind the camera. But after being a lifelong boxing fan with a personal connection to a woman also fighting to take care of her child, she said she knew this was the project to finally take the leap.
“I was told a long time ago if you’re going to be a filmmaker and tell a story, let it be something you love and something you know,” Berry said on the red carpet. “And I feel like this is something I love and know.”
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The independent film, now picked up by Netflix, was originally written for a young white character, with Blake Lively attached to star. After she dropped out, Berry was sent the script and loved it so much that she convinced producers to let her refocus the story to a middle-aged Black woman living and training in Newark for her to star in. She was then tasked with finding a director to lead the project, where she struggled to find someone to match her vision.
“All of the filmmakers that I spoke to, they didn’t see the story that I saw in my head, they couldn’t quite understand all the elements of this,” Berry told Ava DuVernay in a post-screening Q&A at the TCL Chinese Theatre. “I finally went home one night and I was pretty distraught because I was like, ‘Oh god, I can’t seem to get a filmmaker to make this story.’ And then my dear friend, [producer] Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas said to me, ‘Why don’t you direct?’ And I said, ‘Me? I’ve never directed a movie before, this is too big of a role to play. I can’t do that.’ She said, ‘You absolutely can, you love it like I’ve never seen anybody love anything.'”
Berry said she woke up the next morning and told her team she wanted to do it, once again pitching producers to helm the film. They agreed, with the star remembering how she “ran to the hallway of the office and screamed at the top of my lungs, ‘I’m going to direct a movie!'” ” It was one of my greatest moments,” she said.
The film seems to have provided many of those moments for Berry, as after taking the stage with DuVernay following Saturday’s premiere — marking the first time she’d seen the film with an audience — she tearily declared the experience “one of the greatest moments in my whole life” as DuVernay welcomed her to “the directing tribe; specifically the women directing tribe; more specifically the Black women directing tribe.”
It was also “the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Berry said of her directorial debut, with four to five hours of training a day followed by shooting prep. “I don’t know how I did it. I was on some adrenaline, I was on a high.”
“I had to get this out of my body and so I had to do it, I just had to keep going day after day and I was energized by it, I was ignited by and I was refusing to be told ‘no’,” she added, with the extra obstacles of the indie movie almost being shut down multiple times by the shortage of funds.
As for if she’ll continue down this behind-the-camera path, Berry told DuVernay, “It’s hard to say what will actually be in my future but I will say this — I know that women of color have to keep telling their stories because we have a definitive point of view. And for so long, our stories have been told by men or white men or even white women. And I think it’s really important that we continue to tell our own stories through our own lens and make them valuable.”
“So for whether I’ll do it or not, I hope so,” she continued. “I hope I’ll be afforded another opportunity to get behind the camera and tell another story that I’m passionate about.”
Bruised hits theaters Wednesday and starts streaming on Netflix on Nov. 24.
