Actress Regina King has been gracing our screens, big and small, for over 30 years and she says that she is just now seeing a change in Hollywood that excites her.
“Just as a woman, I feel like roles have evolved. It’s okay to be a flawed woman, especially as a black woman,” King explained Sonia Denis on After After Party. Just as important as seeing real representations of women on camera, King is actively looking to create opportunities for women behind the camera.
King is leading the Her Shot Campaign, in partnership with Gillette Venus, as it gives 10 up-and-coming female directors a chance to create. “They created a platform for female directors that are so diverse – Black women, trans women, Latina women, white women – and they’ve given them the opportunity to tell stories through their individual perspective,” shares King.
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Unsurprisingly, disrupting a male-dominated industry to create more opportunities for women to tell the stories and create the roles they want to see isn’t easy. While women are getting more chances to succeed, they are rarely (if ever) given the room to fail. “I have been on sets with female directors where the sets were run better than with a male director and vice versa. It has nothing to do with being a woman and that’s what’s really unfair,” explains King. “When you do get that opportunity, you are there for every female director to come. If it doesn’t go well on your watch then it’s ‘Oh well the last time we had a female director…’”
King makes an important point: for more women to succeed, they have to be given the room to fail.