Mira Nair‘s exceptional film Queen of Katwe about Ugandan master chess player Phiona Mutesi opens in select theaters today. After watching the beautifully done coming-of-age story which has helped reshape what a Disney film can be, we got the opportunity to chat with the film’s screenwriter William Wheeler. Wheeler was gracious enough to discuss his journey to the project, staying true to the story and connecting with the film’s characters. Read the interview in full below.
Thank you so much William for taking the time to speak with me about Queen Of Katwe, it was a wonderful film and celebration of an exceptional young woman.
William Wheeler: It’s my pleasure, thanks for being curious about it.
Certainly! Queen of Katwe is so different from Ray Donovan or anything else you’ve ever written. How did you approach this story?
WW: Well, I would say that it’s definitely true, it’s very different than anything I tried to work on before. I was sent the article by the director, Mira Nair. She and I had worked together on another film called The Reluctant Fundamentalist. So we knew each other and we had a good working relationship on that film. So, she shared Phinoa’s story with me, and I think that I was drawn to it and taken with it maybe because it was so different than anything I had worked on before. Whether it was Ray Donovan or other scripts that I had written, they usually were darker commentary.
Yes for sure!
WW: They had darker impulses, and the thing that was so interesting about this was that it was so aspirational and it was really hopeful. And, all of the people in it were commendable people. To me, that was kind of the hardest part to create drama out of. (Laughing) When you create drama out of people that you like and are doing admirable things, you sometimes struggle to find the conflict that would drive the story. So, I actually went to Uganda, I went to Kampala in the summer of 2013. I was able to visit with Mira and work on the story and at the same time, spend a lot of time in Katwe meeting Phinoa and Robert and the kids in the Pioneer’s Program and visiting this very particular place. From my visits with Robert and Phinoa that was where I think we came up with our general idea for our approach for the film.
What was that approach?
WW: To briefly characterize what it was for me, there’s a girl and she’s exposed to two different ways of looking a the world. One she gets from her mom, which comes with a lot of suspicion, a lot of caution about trying for something and getting yourself disappointed, a stoicism in the face of hardship. And then there’s this new perspective that comes in which is that of her coach and her friend Robert who is more hopeful and who is really talking to his kids about how they are going to survive and transcend their circumstances; their upbringing in Katwe. We wound up really seeing the movie as a war inside Phiona over these two ways of looking at the world, and trying to figure out which set of shoes she was going to stand in.
Oh for sure. Now, how important was it for you to stay true to real-life events considering all of Phinoa’s hardships and the fact that this a Disney PG-rated film?
WW: That was definitely a balancing act. We were pretty determined that we did not want to minimize or lessen the truth or the difficulties that Phinoa faced and all of the kids there faced. So I think it became about being selective in what you focus on. There is no question for example, that teen pregnancy and prostitution are highly common in Katwe, they are a big problem in Katwe. That was something that had touched Phiona’s family through her older sister. So we made the decision, we definitely wanted that to be in the movie. I think it just becomes about suggesting perhaps instead of spelling things out in very specific terms so that maybe our audience members that are adults can have a higher degree of recognition than the kids while watching the film. Trying to manage that was part of the effort to be truthful to what the circumstances were and yet, honor and understand the fact that it was a studio film and it was going to be for families and for kids and for people all over the world. And we wanted it to be that way; we didn’t want it to be a little tiny independent film that nobody went to see. Part of what everyone is proud about and excited about is the idea that Disney with this film is in many ways expanding the idea of what a Disney film is.
Oh most certainly. How much did you connect with Tim Crother’s who first wrote about Phinoa and authored the book Queen of Katwe?
WW: You know what I met him through his work. We were working from his article and I also read his book. I guess more of the details of our approach came from this fairly extensive process of going to Uganda and meeting the people. Even if you have great source material which Tim’s was, you want to compliment that with your own experiences, standing in places where people live and talking to them about their lives. Tim’s work was an amazing staring point and we tried to expand and do our own research from there.
I have to ask, did you know anything at all about chess prior to writing the screenplay? I barely know any of the rules and yet I found the scenes that focused on the actual game some of the most compelling in the film.
WW: I did actually. I’m not a good chess player but, I’m a very enthusiastic chess player. (Laughing) Actually, when I went to college at NYU, my dorm was a hundred yards from Washington Square Park, and the park then was a chess scene. They have that one little corner if you’re familiar with it, where there’s chess hustling going on all the time. My friends and I thought that was the coolest thing ever so, I spent a lot of time watching chess games and paying these chess guys a buck or two to beat me terribly so I could learn. Which sadly continued when I visited Katwe and I played Phiona, Benjamin and the others.
(Laughing) Oh gosh! I’m sure.
WW: Yes, it was really bad.
Well, I commend you for your efforts because I certainly would not have even bothered to play.
WW: (Laughing) I had to try.
So we talked a bit earlier about Disney changing the idea of what a Disney film is. This film is being praised because it has an all-Black cast, it’s a very different kind of story for a mainstream film. So in your opinion, why is Queen Of Katwe so important for today’s society?
WW: Well, I think it’s hard for artists to declare something like, “The film is important for society.” But, I will say that there has been a history in Hollywood of a pretty narrow range of perspectives; very often Western, very often white, and very often male. Main characters who are a very wide scope of people have sort of been forced to accept this as a universal perspective on the world. So, I really like that this is a young girl from Africa, this is a person of color who is not focused on in this movie because she’s from Africa or because she’s a person of color. She’s just a person, and she’s going through completely universal problems. Obviously, many of us don’t know what it’s like to not have running water, or to not have access to medical care, but we do know what it’s like to want to change our circumstances and to not know how. And we know what it’s like to be struggling between a parent who loves us, but who also may be holding us back and meeting someone new who has an entirely different way of viewing the world. So, I think seeing Phiona as someone that anyone regardless of what color they are or where they are from can relate to and connect to is a good thing. And, I think that all that came along with that, whether it’s the fact that Mira Nair is a woman and a person of color and she lives in Uganda and she cast this film with almost entirely African actors, the fact that when we talked about how we were going to do this story, we never for a second considered there being like “the white reporter to talk these people and discover Africa”, it wasn’t that. My hope is that there is kind of a new sense of principles that we apply to storytelling for studio films. It would be wonderful if it could be a model of sorts going forward.
Wonderful, I think that’s just so incredible. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me William, I really loved the film.
WW: Thanks so much, I’m really grateful for the opportunity to talk to you about it.
Queen Of Katwe opens in select theaters Friday, September 23 and goes wide on Friday, September 30.
