King's Gambit

Regina King is acting royalty and now she’s bringing all of her nuance and fierce intelligence to her directorial debut, One Night In Miami. She gets personal and political with Total Film…

- JAMIE GRAHAM

Growing up in California, Regina King wanted to be not an actor or a director but a dentist, and her smile is certainly radiant when she pops up on Zoom wearing a grey hoodie and a Van Halen cap. She has reason to grin for it is the day after the US election has been called, with Joe Biden’s victory ensuring that Donald Trump does not get a second term as president. King, naturally, is delighted – she’s a political person whose beliefs are reflected in many of her film choices over a 35-year career, from Boyz N The Hood to If Beale Street Could Talk. And also by her activism: in the weeks leading up to the election, she could be seen urging people to vote; in September, when her performance as crimefighter Angela Abar/Sister Night in HBO’s Watchmen saw her receive an Emmy, her fourth, for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie, she wore a Breonna Taylor t-shirt; and she has been a vocal supporter of the Time’s Up movement to equalise pay and conditions for women in Hollywood.

“It is a moment of exhaling,” she says of the Democrats winning the White House. “But I still feel like we’ve got so much to do. In the next 100 days, who are going to be those Cabinet members? How are we going to not take our foot off the gas, and lobby to put people in that have all of America’s best interests [at heart]?” She allows herself another dazzling smile. “Yes, it’s a sigh of relief. I guess the most positive way to describe how I feel is that if Trump had won, the work that we need to do would have just been… almost impossible, you know? And at least now it feels like, ‘OK, we’ve got a shot to move this boulder uphill.’”