Harper’s Bazaar was very generous with the photos they sent out to accompany this cover, and I’m happy I get to give you such a large dose of Regina King today. But please do not skip the profile. Not only is Regina thoughtful on the subject of Shirley, the biopic of Shirley Chisholm in which she’s starring, but her ruminations on grief and moving forward are raw and moving and ALSO very generous; she is vulnerable in discussing what she’s been through because she understands that other people sharing in this way is what’s helped HER on the journey. I picked this because of the graceful way she buttons it up, but there’s amazing stuff in the paragraphs preceding it:
King doesn’t remember everything that happened when they all reconvened a few months after Ian’s death to finish shooting Shirley. That period, she says, is like a blur. But she does remember some moments vividly. She knew she had to finish the movie and is grateful to Ridley, the crew, the cast, which included Terrence Howard, André Holland, Christina Jackson, Lucas Hedges, and the late Lance Reddick, and her younger sister, Reina King, who served as a coproducer on the film, for the way they lifted her up and made it their mission to complete the movie too.
“I know Ian would have felt like if I didn’t finish something because of a choice that he needed to make, then I wasn’t honoring him,” King says. “We all landed at the finish line on Ian’s wings. He guided us there.”
The profile as a whole is well done and widely reported — it’s noteworthy just how many people, from all swaths of her career, gladly took the phone call to give a quote about Regina. You have Angela Bassett, Carrie Coon, Lucy Liu, Barry Jenkins, Leslie Odom, Jr., and Damon Lindelof, in addition to the Shirley director John Ridley. That’s a lot of star power for a profile that also gives half of its space to Regina’s words alone. Also, I bring glad tidings: Near the end she says one of her missions is to find and produce the role that wins Angela Bassett an overdue Oscar, and I can only DREAM of what these two could produce together.
