For three months, Ryan Destiny had trained to portray Claressa Shields, the first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in boxing, in the biopic “The Fire Inside.” There was a screenplay by Barry Jenkins, the director of “Moonlight,” and an Oscar-nominated cinematographer, Rachel Morrison, making her feature directorial debut.
But after two days of filming in March 2020, production was halted because of the coronavirus pandemic. Universal Pictures ultimately decided to drop the movie.
When Destiny learned about the studio’s decision, she cried.
“I was so heartbroken because I know how rare an opportunity like this is,” said Destiny, 29, who was previously on the television series “Star” and “Grown-ish.” “And I just felt like, ‘Of course this will happen when I finally get in the door a little bit with a role that is so vulnerable and raw and real and will touch people.’”
About four years after the movie was dropped, “The Fire Inside” — now distributed by Amazon MGM Studios — is set to release in theaters on Christmas. It premiered in September at the Toronto International Film Festival, which can help give a movie buzz entering awards season.
“I just knew we would find a way, I wasn’t going to let it go,” Morrison said. “In my head, I was like, ‘OK, this is undeniable.’”
“The Fire Inside” was inspired by “T-Rex,” a 2015 documentary about Shields, who lived with her boxing coach as a teenager because of a strained relationship with her mother and then won gold in the 2012 Summer Games in London when she was 17. After companies did not endorse her, choosing stars in more glamorous sports, Shields won gold again, in 2016. She is now a multiple-division champion in professional boxing.
“When you watch the film, you realize how incredible this woman’s story is, and you wonder, ‘Why aren’t I more familiar with this?” said Jenkins, who had not heard of Shields before a producer asked him to write the screenplay.
Morrison, the cinematographer on “Black Panther” and “Mudbound,” was looking to enter feature directing and was excited by Jenkins’s script. Jenkins said he appreciated Morrison’s vision for how to marry the boxing elements with the dramatization of Shields’s intrapersonal relationships in Flint, Mich.
Morrison started taking boxing lessons to understand the world and initially wanted to find a lead actor with an athletic background. She pivoted, though, because certain scenes required theatrical poise. Destiny impressed Morrison in auditions during a scene with a verbal argument between Shields and Jason Crutchfield, her coach.
“She was just that good that we had to take the leap of faith that we could get her there as a boxer,” Morrison said.
There was concern about Destiny’s physicality. She had minimal sports experience beyond high school volleyball and cheerleading, and is much smaller than Shields, who competed in the 165-pound division at the Olympics.
“Ryan has never been into a street fight or any type of altercation in her life,” Shields said with a chuckle. Shields, 29, was largely hands-off during filmmaking but talked regularly to Morrison and Destiny via calls and texts.
Destiny trained for the boxing scenes with Robert Sale, who prepared Michael B. Jordan for “Creed.” Her onscreen coach was originally played by Ice Cube before Universal Pictures dropped the project.
“Everybody was panicked and they were looking for their sure bets, and anything that wasn’t a sure bet, they didn’t want to take a chance on,” Morrison said.
Spokesmen for Universal Pictures did not respond to requests for comment.
The movie received a lifeline with help from a former Amazon MGM executive. Filming restarted in 2022 with Brian Tyree Henry, who starred in the television series “Atlanta” and was an Oscar nominee for “Causeway,” taking over the coach’s role.
Morrison used the additional time to sharpen her skills, directing television episodes for “American Crime Story” and “The Mandalorian.” Destiny said she gained about eight pounds of muscle because of the extra training.
“Having to stuff myself essentially was new for me and pretty annoying,” she said. “I also hate the taste of protein. It was just not my favorite.”
The delay also means the film will reach audiences at a time when interest in women’s sports is rising, spurred by the arrivals of Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese in the W.N.B.A., as well as by the gymnast Simone Biles’s triumphant return to the Olympics.
As Shields’s story shows, such financial and cultural support were not always there.
“Women’s sports have always been fighting for equality, and I’ve been fighting for equality for a really long time,” Shields said. “I think this is the perfect time for it to come out.”
The post An Emotional Boxing Biopic Overcame an Early Knockdown appeared first on New York Times.
