Sheila Atim is electric in The Woman King alongside Viola Davis and Lashana Lynch. In our latest column, Josh Smith Meets, Sheila talks to Josh about overcoming the physical and emotional challenges of stunt training, the movie’s important representation of black beauty, dealing with the backlash towards the storyline and reaching for her biggest dream yet: playing Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame live action remake.
It was two months before filming began on The Woman King that Sheila Atim started seriously auditioning for the role of Amenza. One of Viola Davis’s key allies in the historic epic which traces the story of the all-female army of the West African kingdom of Dahomey who fight fearlessly against European slave traders to protect their lands and people. But it was another Hollywood icon and another game changing Oscar winner that led her to the role: Halle Berry. Casual.
“The editor on the movie,Terilyn Shropshire also edited Bruised, which is the film that Halle Berry started and directed on Netflix that I was also in,” Sheila says, recounting the tale. “There was a kind of friends and family crossover going on there where Terilyn said [to The Woman King director, Gina Prince-Bythewood], ‘I think you should think about this girl for Amenza!’ So I read my scenes over a Zoom and then Halle Berry was kind enough to release some footage of me in the film, Bruised to Sony. She was kind enough to do that as part of the pitch to get me on board. A couple of days later, they asked me if I wanted to do it and I was like, ‘absolutely, sign me up!’”
This looks EPIC.
It wasn’t Sheila’s first big role. The nearly six foot tall actress - who grew up in East London after her mother left Uganda in the 1990s with a young Sheila alongside, during the country’s civil war - has already featured in Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, won the Chopard Trophy at Cannes which pinpoints the best up-and-coming talent and has won two Olivier awards for her West End work. But The Woman King certainly provided one of the greatest challenges.
The challenge involved a grueling training process to become a real life warrior, something the 31 year-old describes as a “very physical process, but also very psychological and emotional.” I think I would feel emotional over doing 90 minutes of weights and three hours of fight training every day too. More than that I would have a full adult toddler tantrum every single minute. But Sheila was born to be a warrior on screen.
Watching Sheila in the movie leaping, fighting and sticking a spear in countless people I couldn’t help but let out, ‘f**k me this is intense!’ But how intense was it in real life? “It was as intense as you would think it was from watching the film,” Sheila laughs. “We were learning completely new skills and in order to do that in quite a short space of time, there's lots of repetition. It requires a degree of discipline. We trained throughout the shooting process as well. Our trainer, Gabriella McClain is like the loveliest woman and also the scariest trainer ever. She's not scary in her demeanor, but she will just make everything hurt. You'll be like, ‘this will be fine,’ and then like three seconds in, it's the most painful thing you've ever experienced.”
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The pain was all part of the process, for Sheila though. “It was a massive part of every single person's journey and integral to us accessing our characters as well because the way we fight, and our weapons are all different. I fight on a spear and everyone else fights on a machete for the most part. We wanted to give our fighting styles different characteristics so we don't all just fight in the same way. I can now, really picture myself in the studio spinning the stick cause I would go in after hours and practice, I would practice on my balcony in my apartment. I would practice at any given opportunity.”
I wonder what said discipline and such a physical role taught Sheila about her body image and physical strength. “I learned so much about my body,” she replies. “I learned where my strengths are. I learned where my weaknesses are. I learned what my attributes are and that was something the training team wanted to capitalise on, which is why I ended up fighting with a spear, cause I'm tall, I've got long leavers to get that reach.” You would not want to mess with Sheila’s levers, that’s for sure.
“What’s lovely about the film was Gina was so conscious about casting women with different body shapes and body types,” she continues. “That would've been true to life first of all: a lot of these women as you see in the film were captives or they come from different places and they came to be in the army in different ways. So to have a completely homogenous group of women just wouldn't have made sense. But it also means that the payoff is you see all of these different varieties of shapes and sizes, finding what works for them and still being able to proceed with strength in the same way. Even in the training, I was never made to feel like I had to emulate somebody else's body shape or type or lift the same as them. The challenge was with myself and I was supported through that by the team and I think that's a really beautiful thing about the film.”
One beautiful thing that radiates from The Woman King is the power of community and off screen the friendship is palpable between Sheila and her co-starts, 007 agent herself, Lashana Lynch, newcommer, Thuso Mbedu and the high priestess of acting, Viola Davis. “When you talk about community, I actually think it was vital,” Sheila reveals. “I don't think we could have done it without it. Self doubt can creep in, there are days when you are exhausted, days when you are maybe feeling like you are not doing the best you can or you're letting the side down and there's just always somebody to scoop you back up or there was always something to observe and be inspired by. Even working with somebody like Viola, there was no sense of hierarchy when it came to the things that I learned from her, it wasn't her as this, ‘more experienced actress telling me as a younger actress what to do,’ it was just hearing her talk about her life, experiences, watching her work and doing scenes with her. That's where I really felt like I learned so much.”
Whilst the movie’s foundations are in community, The Woman King’s presentation of black beauty in all forms from varying hairstyles to armpit hair is breathtakingly beautiful. How did it feel to be in a movie with such a rich tapestry of black beauty shown on screen? “It was everything,” Sheila replies without hesitation. “For everyone on this planet, but particularly for people who feel either underrepresented or marginalised, there's no point in being invited into a room if you're not also gonna be embraced once you're in that room.”
“I have no shame in talking about it.”
“Making a film with a 99% Black female cast is great, but if we are not allowed to explore what our hairstyles will look like or if we're not allowed to imbue the film and our characters in the story with details that are specific to our experience, then it doesn't mean anything,” Sheila adds. “We needed to be able to show us in our full spectrum, as much as possible, within two hours and six minutes. We needed to be able to see different hues of our skin tone. We needed to be able to see different hairstyles, see us fighting, see us vulnerable, see us crying, see us struggling, see us laughing. We needed to be able to see all of those things and then braid each other's hair, which you see in the film. We needed the full spectrum of who we are, what we have been and what we can be. That's what the film is really about.”
For many The Woman King is a landmark in the presentation and representation of Black women on screen. When did Sheila first feel seen on screen? “One of my favorite things when I was a kid was, Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” she tells me before we begin a joint fan-girling moment about the sheer artistry of the movie’s soundtrack.
Before we break into full on Disney karaoke, Sheila continues, “She was one of the first characters I fell in love with because first and foremost she was brown. And when you're a child, it really can be that simple, ‘that person kind of looks a bit like me,’ even if they don't look exactly like you. But you think, ‘Oh okay, that person is valid in this environment, in this story, is worth telling stories about, is worth reflecting, portraying and is worth a group of people taking the time to discuss and explore. But also she was just so cool, and then she did have this softness and she had a romantic part to her character as well, which Black women don't always get to do or if we do have romance in our stories it’s usually in a very kind of narrow prison. She could fight as well, she was like on the fringes of society and she had a pet goat which had an earring!” That goat really did know how to accessorise, didn’t he?
I raise the valid point that the movie is crying out for a live-action remake. Can we manifest for Sheila? “I’ve told my agent, ‘if you hear anything ever about The Hunchback of Notre Dame, you have to call them every single day and tell them I am doing it. Not even, ‘can she do it?’ It’s, ‘I'm doing it and here's my measurement for my costume!’” Lets all manifest this not just for Sheila but for the good of the cinema going population around the world! It’s genius casting.
Back to The Woman King and #BoycottWomanKing was trending on Twitter ahead of the movie’s release, with it coming under attack as some believed the movie ignored - or revised - the Agojie warrior’s past which included them capturing and selling individuals in the transatlantic slave trade. The worries are quashed by watching the movie, but given the warriors were involved in the slave trade, was Sheila nervous about taking on the role?
“We were all aware of it, but not in a way that deterred us or frightened us. We knew that the film not only addresses it, it was integral to the narrative of the film and is addressed within the first 30 seconds,” she responds, pointing to The Woman’s King’s overt and clear focus on the topic. “I understand completely why there can be so much contention around not just the slave trade or art around the slave trade, but ‘Black trauma’ in general. I use that in inverted commas because it's not a complete term but for the purpose of now it is what I'll use. I understand why for a long time we were only allowed to make art about trauma and we don't always feel like we want to have that reflected back to us. At the same time there's the truth and we deal in the truth when we're not dealing in fantasy. I think we need to see that as long as it's handled with care, with consideration, with intelligence, with discussion and then it can serve a really genuine purpose.”
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“One of the places that we screened the film was at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC which is the largest museum for African American history,” Sheila continues. “That museum absolutely has to exist. We can't just say that because there is a tragically painful history in there that we should ignore it, forget about it and leave it. It's important to exhume those stories but it's important to be very aware of exactly what you are exhuming, treat the people who are a part of those stories with dignity, and also accept that you will not please everyone. For anybody who may have preconceptions about what they think this film is about, I'd just encourage them to go and see it because it's not revisionist at all and I know that great pains were taken by the all of the creative team to really pull out as much truth as they could from history and make sure they put it into this film.”
Just as our time wraps up, I wonder what lasting lessons The Woman King has taught Sheila? “It taught me really how to move through challenge. It was a tough shoot and the story itself was tough. A lot of that actually was to do with vulnerability and accepting where my limits were, challenging myself but also being proud when I knew I'd done my best and going easy on myself. I took away the understanding that actually my strength is more of a varied and diverse thing than I once realised; it's not just about smashing through until you reach what you think is your desired result.”
Now those are the words of a true, real life warrior.
The Woman King is in cinemas now.
