Regina King on the rarely seen Black "bromance" of One Night In Miami

In a recent interview for InStyle, Regina King revealed that she wanted her first directorial feature to be, “a love story with a historical backdrop, like a Titanic,” but then she read the script for One Night In Miami and had a change of plans. And though it may not be a love story in a traditional sense, the film—adapted from a play by Kemp Powers—has a certain sweeping romance to it, imbued with the charisma of its characters, four icons of Black American history. In fact, King considers her film a “bromance,” the kind rarely seen between Black men on film, as it imagines the conversations between Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown on one fateful evening in the Hampton House hotel. Ahead of One Night In Miami’s January 15 streaming premiere on Prime Video, The A.V. Club has the opportunity to speak with the award-winning actor and director about how her career’s been building up to this moment, and why her film’s “timeliness” is unfortunately woven into the fabric of America.

One Night In Miami begins streaming exclusively on Prime Video on January 15