Gina Prince-Bythewood '91: "The Secret Life of Bees"

It's hard to believe the new movie written and directed by alumna Gina Prince-Bythewood '91, "The Secret Life of Bees," which she adapted from the award-winning novel by Sue Monk Kidd, is only her second theatrical feature. She's been working steadily, and piling up awards, after all, almost from the day she graduated.

In fact, Prince-Bythewood was already picking up accolades such as the Gene Reynolds Scholarship for Directing and the Ray Stark Memorial Scholarship as a student . She was hired as a writer on the college-themed "Cosby Show" spin-off "A Different World," and stints on "Felicity," "South Central," "Courthouse" and "Sweet Justice" quickly followed. She has won an NAACP Image Award and an Emmy nomination for her work in television.

The semi-auto-biographical debut feature that Prince-Bythewood wrote and directed in 2000, "Love & Basketball," won wide critical praise, an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature and a Humanitas Prize. It has many fans who will be delighted to see Prince-Bythewood back on the big screen with a high-profile Fox Searchlight release.

Set in South Carolina in the 1960s, "The Secret Life of Bees" focuses on the bee-keeping Boatwright sisters (Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo), who must adjust to the unexpected arrival of 14n-year-old Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning) and her caretaker Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson) in their close-knit household.

With her friends Mara Brock Akil, Sara Finney Johnson and professor Felicia Henderson '84, MFA '04, Prince-Bythewood endows The Four Sisters Scholarship at the School.

Sheila Roberts: Can you talk about how this project evolved?

Gina Prince-Bythewood: The project got sent to me before it even came out. It was released as a book so it got to me 6 or 7 years ago. But I'd come off of back to back movies and I was burned out so I didn't even pick it up. Throughout the years, my mom, friends, cousins kept telling me "You've got to read this book and I kept blowing it off. Then about 2 years ago, an actor friend said she was going in to audition for it, and I got incredibly jealous. "Wait, that's supposed to be my movie—even though I hadn't read it yet. So I went home that night and read it in one sitting and then was incredibly pissed off because I realized the opportunity that I had let get away. Then, miraculously, 2 months later, I got a call from my agents that they didn't like the script and it moved to another studio. They wanted to start over. So this time I went after it and got it. Once I got it officially, I sent an email to Sue Monk telling her how much I loved the book and that I'd do my best to protect it. She had watched "Love & Basketball" and sent me this great email back that she trusted and believed in me.

I think everything happens for a reason. I don't think five years ago I was ready to tell the story. But also Dakota was clearly not old enough, and now I cannot see this film without her. Jennifer Hudson wasn't even on the scene yet, Alicia was too young, and Queen was in a different place.

We heard you did a lot of work with the actors. Can you talk about what you did to get them into that time period?

There are two major things I did. The first one was the drug store. You know Jennifer is newer to acting and her life after "Dreamgirls" has been limos and gowns and Oscars. She had no way of getting in touch with what it must have been like at that time, and she didn't grow up at that time, so what did she have to draw on? So I hired some actors and put them in the drugstore set and gave them each a character. Then I told Dakota and Jennifer, "Just don't hit anybody." But going in there, Jennifer didn't realize that they were actors. They were pretty rough with her, but they were treating her the way that they would have treated her back then.

I asked her, what the hardest thing was. She said when she would ask the sales people questions, they would turn to Dakota and answer Dakota. That feeling of being invisible was the thing that she took away from it. I had given the guy at the counter a specific direction: If she sits down next to you, say you don't want to sit next to any niggers. I couldn't hear when he said it, but I saw Jennifer's head whip over to him, and it was like okay, okay. She said at that moment what went through her head was 'Don't hit anybody, don't hit anybody.'

Then the other exercise was with Nate and Alicia, because there was no time for rehearsal. Nate got hired two days before he started working. Their relationship is key and their chemistry, and also this is a younger actor who had to work with Alicia Keys and didn't want to be freaked out. He arrived on set. I told him to go pick up Alicia at her trailer as his character and bring her back to mine. They did and they walked in and there were candles set up and dinner and '60s music. I said, "You guys have got 10 minutes to talk as Alicia and Nate and then you guys are your characters." It was a date. I was hoping it would last a half hour, and it lasted a couple hours. From that moment on, they had just clicked into their characters and they were Neil and June for the rest of the shoot.

Were the singing moments in the film improv or were they in the script that you wrote?

They were in the script. They were actually there prior to casting, so the fact that we ended up with great singers just made it better. The hardest thing is like the scene with "Breakaway" when they're singing in the kitchen. It couldn't be Jennifer Hudson singing because she could blow that song out of the water. The outtakes are probably the best part of that because as soon as I'd say "Cut," all three of the women were just taking the song to another level. So it was really just remaining true to the characters but still having fun.

You seem too young to have lived in that time. Did that make it easier or harder to adapt the book?

It's definitely tough. With "Love & Basketball," that was my life, so it was easy to draw on. With this, it was all about research, and the great thing is, my husband's family is from South Carolina. They owned a ton of land, which was definitely different than most people. So to be able to talk to them — they were all teenagers at that time, in 1964 — that was just invaluable. A lot of specific things like the June bug on the string, that's how they used to play, I never would have known that growing up in California. But then the bigger issue was just their mindset at the time, the struggle that was going on. Despite the struggles, they were living lives and falling in love, and people tend to forget that. When we think about the '60s, we only think about the struggle and it was important for this movie to show all sides of it.

Can you talk about Paul Bettany's performance? He brought so much to a role that could have been totally cliche.
Paul was one of the last people we cast. He was on my list way early on. I just saw a picture of him and there was something about him. When I finally met with him, he walked in and my only fear was, was he going to be this skinny Englishman. He walked into the hotel room and he's huge. He's like 6 foot and huge, broad shoulders. My mind was just screaming, "Oh my god, this is T. Ray!" The big thing he didn't want to do was what we called the 'twirling mustache performance.' It was really about making sure he had enough levels to play.

Alicia Keys mentioned a book that you asked the actors to read.

I gave them all a '60s care package. Each character had something a little different but everyone got "Coming of Age in Mississippi," which is a brilliant autobiography. They all got this photo-biography on Freedom Summer, which helped them just visually. They all got "Four Little Girls," the documentary by Spike Lee. They all got "Eyes on the Prize." And then Paul Bettany got a great book written by a white man growing up at that time in the '60s. It just had a great perspective I hadn't read before, which is that no one thinks they're a racist. They're reacting to the times and again, we didn't want Paul to be this redneck racist.

Do you generally look for adaptations these days or are there other things that you want to do that are original

The thing I'm probably going to come out with next is a modern love story set in the music world. Adaptations are great because it's right there for you, you know, the structure and the characters. But it's also tough because you're trying to push an entire book into a screenplay, and what do you take out and what do you keep in? And when everything is your own, it's 100 percent your vision. There's something nice about that.

You might try getting some of your actors from this movie into that because obviously they all have experience in the music world?

One of them I'm talking to right now.

Do we have to guess who it is?

[laughs] I'm not going to answer!

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