In the film world, Halle Berry has nothing short of legend status.
There’s a handsome little man named Oscar in her trophy case she can thank for that, along with the history that came with it: Two decades ago, she became the first Black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress – and out of nearly 80 all-time winners of the prize, she remains the only Black woman to take it home.
To movie aficionados, it might seem odd that someone of the 55-year-old Berry’s stature would choose as her latest project an MMA movie. And to the same, it might seem especially peculiar that she decided to not only star in it, but take on directing for the first time.
But to MMA fans, it probably makes a lot of sense. They’ve seen Berry as a cageside fixture at UFC fights for years – she did the ceremonial faceoff for Rose Namajunas and Zhang Weili in Las Vegas earlier this month – and she’s been training just about every discipline of the sport for years, too.
In “Bruised,” which lands at Netflix on Wednesday, Berry plays Jackie Justice, a former UFC standout who had a breakdown in the cage and dropped out of the sport. With her life in proverbial shambles, she finds herself in position to start training again for a climb back against Invicta FC champion “Lady Killer,” played by current UFC women’s flyweight champ Valentina Shevchenko.
When Berry first got hold of the project, the starring role was attached to Blake Lively. It wasn’t until Lively passed on it that Berry officially could get involved.
“I love this genre. I love this idea of fighting for the underdog, watching someone find redemption. I think that’s something that’s so relatable to all people,” Berry told MMA Junkie. “When I read this script, while it wasn’t originally written for someone like me – it was written for a 25-year-old white Irish Catholic woman – I still connected to the bones of the story. I connected to the brokenness of all the characters, of all of them, one together, trying to fight to better themselves and find forgiveness and move forward in their life.”
Berry has spoken openly about being a latchkey kid growing up in Cleveland, particularly while making the rounds doing promotion for “Bruised” the past few weeks. She found solace in the boxing stars on her TV on Saturdays – Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard – and has said she would imagine them as the father she didn’t have.
Her love of combat sports in particular is what drew her to the project. But given the type of character it was written for, she also knew if she ever got the chance, she probably would have some work to do.
“It’s something that once I read it, I just couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t let it go,” Berry said. “And so right away, I started reimagining: ‘Oh, how could this work for someone like me? How can I change the world (of the movie)? How can I change the character? How can I make this work for me?’ Because I desperately wanted to play this character. And I had a big love of MMA. When the script came to me, I was a huge fan of the sport. I was a boxing fan since I was a little girl, so it just ignited me on all levels.”
When Lively dropped out – “the longest six months of my life while I had to wait for her, on her own volition, to pass on it,” Berry said – the door was open.
But that ultimately led to a lot more than just the physical training to get in fighting shape and the work she would need to put into it on the acting side. Eventually, she signed up to direct it, too.
“It’s not something that anybody in their right mind, I think, would actually sign up for,” Berry said. “It sort of evolved. Once I convinced the producers that I should reimagine the story – I gave them my pitch as to how I would reimagine it for a middle-aged Black woman and the world I would set it in – they were all on board. Then they challenged me to go out and find a filmmaker.
“I knew I wanted it to be a female filmmaker, and so I set out and met different people. But the truth of it was, the story and the world, the way I was reimagining it, was only in my head – it wasn’t on paper yet. That’s usually what a filmmaker comes on and does, and they work with the writer and they sort of reimagine the story. I didn’t feel like any of the people I met with really understood the world in which I was trying to create. They didn’t have a love of MMA and the fight game the way I did. And I thought, ‘If you don’t love this, you can’t tell this story. If you’re not curious – really, deeply curious – about these athletes and this world, you can’t tell this story.’
“I just couldn’t find anybody. And I finally went to the producers and I said, ‘Listen, I know this is going to be the craziest thing you’ve ever heard, because it’s even crazy when I say it, but I think I have to do this. Nobody is going to love this like I love it, and I’m going to work too hard that I’m going to have to find a way to do it.’ And to my surprise, they said OK.”
The storylines in “Bruised” might not necessarily be new to movies about MMA or boxing or even sports in general. A former star has fallen from grace, and there are subplots that deal with alcohol abuse; emotional and physical abuse in the home; the need to suddenly take care of a child as a single parent; and more, all while trying to climb back to past greatness.
But under Berry’s direction, they get a fresh coat of realistic grit through the eyes of a woman in a genre that more often than not sees its stories told through the eyes of men.
“I hope that people really get touched by the authenticity of these characters,” Berry said. “I tried to present something that was real for me. I understand this world since I got to create it, and as a Black woman living in this environment, all of these issues are very real. One of the reasons for me to tell this story was to finally do a fight movie that was from a female perspective, a female point of view.
“How we navigate our relationships is different. How we deal with our family of original relationships is different – the mother-daughter relationship is latent with, many times, struggles and problems that we have to get past as women. To be a mother and be a fighter at the same time, and sort of balancing the two of those, I think there are so many issues at play that make the film relatable and I think very real.
“At the end of the day, I hope people take away from it that forgiveness can be had for everyone, all the time. We all are allowed to redeem ourselves. We all make mistakes, and we all are allowed another chance, a second chance, and even in Jackie’s case, a last chance. We do have a chance to get it right, and that psychologically, our mental game is really what’s at play. We can do whatever it is we set our minds to do.”
“Bruised” is now streaming on Netflix.
Oscar winner Halle Berry gives a fresh look to the gritty side of MMA in ‘Bruised’
