Regina King hopes for ‘true systematic change’ after BLM protests

Regina King shines in the 2020 Glamour Women of the Year issue as she talks about her vision for the world amid dark times.

The actress and director is joined by Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, essential workers from Elmhurst Hospital and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund president Sherrilyn Ifill who are all featured in the special digital issue.

In the accompanying interview King, 49, who has had an incredible year career-wise, speaks of her desire to see change in the world as she reflects on a year of turmoil.

King has a lot to be proud of, last month she won an Emmy for Watchmen and also became the first Black woman director to have a film screened at Venice Film Festival.

But those achievements amid the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 have been bittersweet.

‘I am overall. I am happy. I am filled with gratitude, but I do realize that I would like in my lifetime to see what the other side of this looks like—the other side of what a changed system looks like, true systematic change. 

‘Great ideals, great ideals, but when and where are we going to see it? It feels like we are in this powder keg moment, but it feels like…that phoenix rising from the ashes.

‘I’ve got to believe that a phoenix is going to rise as all of this s**t burns down. I say that and I’m including everything from the climate changing to the pandemic. It’s just so much. It’s so much and it’s all happening at once.’ 

The Watchmen star feels like there has been progress and that, in particular, a new global awareness of racial issues has been encouraging for her.

‘I think we’ve had a lot of decades of people just in their own box doing their own thing,’ she adds.

‘I’ve been guilty for it in some spaces in life, because you’re just trying to get your thing going that you’re not paying attention to what’s going on around. 

‘But it feels like people are paying attention. I got to believe that more people are paying attention than not. I got to. When the protests were starting to happen and we were seeing people in Asian countries with their masks on with Black Lives Matter signs—I mean, I’m about to start getting emotional now.’

The Oscar winning actress gets tearful as she tells Glamour, ‘That gave me so much hope, and I don’t think that if we weren’t in the middle of corona when that happened, I don’t think that the world would’ve been paying attention. 

‘We just keep getting hit on the chin. You don’t want these men, these Black men and Black women to die, continue to die. You hate to look at them as martyrs, but if Jacob Blake hadn’t happened, would everything have calmed down? Would people have stopped making noise?’

King is currently preparing for her next role in the Jeymes Samuel directed western called The Harder They Fall, starring alongside Idris Elba, Zazie Beetz and Jonathan Majors.

‘For three decades, Glamour has recognized the most influential and accomplished women on the planet. Our Women of the Year awards celebrate trailblazers and power brokers and Nobel Peace Prize winners,’ Glamour editor-in-chief Samantha Barry says.

‘The 2020 class of honorees is no exception: frontline hospital workers, a civil rights lawyer, a headstrong politician, a labor rights icon, and a superstar actress bringing untold stories to the screen. But among all that star power, it was also important to us this year to shine a light on our remarkable audience. 

‘To live through this moment is to demonstrate Herculean resolve, resilience, and power. We all deserve an award for getting through it, tears, breakdowns, and all. And so this year belongs to each and every one of you—our women of the year.’