Women Behind the Scenes Spotlight: Gina Prince-Bythewood

Photo Credit: Jeff Vespa-Getty

Gina Prince-Bythewood is an American film director and screenwriter, who was adopted by a middle-class family in Pacific Grove, California where she grew up and graduated from Pacific Grove High School. She then attended and graduated from UCLA’s film school in 1991.

Over the course of the next 10 years, she worked on TV shows like A Different World, South Central, Sweet Justice, Courthouse and Felicity. In 2000, she wrote and directed the acclaimed feature film Love & Basketball, which was based on her personal life and her experiences growing up. The film won 12 awards, including Best Film at the Black Reel Awards and Best First Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards. That same year she directed the TV movie Disappearing Acts – based on the Terry McMillan novel – that starred Wesley Snipes and Sanaa Lathan.

For the next few years, she directed episodes of shows like The Bernie Mac Show, Girlfriends and Everybody Hates Chris. It was also during this time that she worked as a producer on the box office film Biker Boyz that including among its ensemble cast Laurence Fishburne, Derek Luke, Orlando Jones, Djimon Hounsou, Lisa Bonet, Larenz Tate, Meagan Good, Salli Richardson-Whitfield and Vanessa Bell Calloway.

She followed that by writing the screenplay and directing the 2008 box office movie The Secret Life of Bees, which was adapted from the best-selling book by Sue Monk Kidd. The prior year she had started work on the film Beyond the Lights, but due to financing and casting issues, that film did not get released until 2014, starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw. It should be noted that this film was shot in 29 days, costing $7 million, and all of the key crew members were women. (Yes, thank you, Gina!!)

In 2017, Gina and her husband Reggie created the FOX drama Shots Fired where she both executive produced, wrote and directed the series. The following year she served as executive producer and director on the Freeform small screen adaptation of Cloak & Dagger.

Her latest project is being the director of the Netflix adaptation of Greg Rucka’s The Old Guard, making her the first black woman to make a comic book film, which starred (among others) Charlize Theron and Kiki Layne.

Here is a trailer for The Old Guard:

Her next project is The Woman King, which is inspired by true events that took place in the Kingdom of Dahomey, one of the most powerful states of Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries. The movie will tell the story of Nanisca (Viola Davis), general of the all-female military unit known as the Amazons, and her daughter, Nawi, who together fought the French and neighboring tribes who violated their honor, enslaved their people and threatened to destroy everything they’ve lived for.

Gina lives in Southern California with her husband Reggie Rock Bythewood, who is also a film director and writer (they met on the writing staff of A Different World.). They are the parents of two boys.

You can follow Gina on Instagram and on Twitter @GPBmadeit.

Make sure to check out our previous spotlight on Alice Waddington here.