Regina King only wants to tell stories that resonate with her.
The Oscar-winning actress, 50, covers Vanity Fair‘s October issue and opened up learning to choose her roles wisely, making sure she feels for them, innately.
“We’re not a monolith. We are quirky people. We can be the athlete and the nerd; we can be the athlete or the nerd,” King said to the mag. “I just have a desire to tell stories that speak to me, you know… Even if it’s a fantastical story. I still feel like the story has to have some bit of heart in it in order to draw people in and keep people there.”
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She explained further, “Somewhere around in-between ‘Boyz N The Hood’ and ‘Poetic Justice’, having gone on a few auditions, a light bulb came on in my head and I was like, You know what? If it doesn’t speak to me on the page, if I’m not feeling that connection to it, I’m not going to audition.”
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She added, “It’s not fair to myself. It’s wasting the casting agent’s time, the producer’s time—and wasting my time, to be quite frank.”
The same goes when King is behind the camera, and she surrounds herself with people who share her thought process.
“Everyone in my tribe doesn’t have the same skin colour, but everyone in my tribe definitely has the same sensibility,” she says. “So I’ve fostered really amazing relationships that run the gamut, that are not just all Black people, that are not just all women. It’s the totality of it all that has me where I sit right now.”
King returns in front of the camera in “The Harder They Fall” which will release later this year.
The October issues of Vanity Fair hits newsstands Sept. 14.
