Or they would say, “I love the fight part. I needed a female director, that was a caveat. They loved the drama part of it, but thought, Does it have to be a fight movie? And they were all women. And I realized that none of them really saw it like I saw it in my head. So all I had in my mind, when I sat down with these filmmakers, was pitch my story how I saw it. You only get to reimagine someone’s script when you become the director, and I hadn’t been given that job yet. But the problem is the reimagining was only in my head at that point, it wasn’t to paper yet. Now, Halle, go find a filmmaker.” I said, “Will do.

So when she passed, I had the opportunity to go to Basil -he was a producer at the time-and pitched my version of it. While she was doing that, I was actively and passionately reimagining the character for a Black woman like me, and in a world that I understood. But if she passes on her own volition, I’ll make sure you get a shot at it.” I knew that would require me reimagining the role for a middle-aged Black woman, and a whole different world because the world that’s on paper is not the world I can exist in. My agent says, “If Blake does it, then obviously you can’t. When I got the script, it was written for a 20-something, white, Irish Catholic girl. So how did you go from starring in the movie to directing it? So I didn’t even really expect to be on this journey directing this film, honestly. I’d have to spend a couple years training and getting my body into shape and learning all these different martial art disciplines. I thought I just wanted to play the MMA fighter. And when this came along, this was just given to me as a script to be an actor in the movie, never to direct it. I always was intending to, right? It was one of those things that was always gnawing at me. But I never really dedicated the time to do it. You know, I’d written it and I was all set to go. It kept getting pushed and pushed and pushed. What happened with that short and how did you land on Bruised ? Wow, that’s a very big leap from plastic surgery to mixed martial arts.

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