Learning to take and throw a punch is one thing, but changing your whole physique to better emulate one of the most awarded athletes in the sport of boxing is a different task entirely. For Ryan Destiny, originally an R&B singer turned actress on shows like “Star” and “Grown-ish,” becoming two-time Olympic gold medalist Claressa “T-Rex” Shields in Rachel Morrison’s “The Fire Inside” was unlike any challenge she’d faced before.
“It was a lot. It was really, really exhausting, but in a good way,” Destiny said to the Los Angeles Times in a recent interview. “Because I have never pushed myself that way ever in my life before. Especially not physically. So to see my body transform from day one until actually starting was so crazy to me because I didn’t know my body could do those things that it was doing. And I built my stamina up in a crazy way. And I was doing things that I just didn’t realize I’d be able to do.”
Destiny went on to explain how the process was less like rehearsing for a role and more like actually training to be the kind of athlete she was portraying.
“My boxing coach, I say it all the time, he really went into this treating me like his fighter and not like an actor,” said Destiny. “And I think those little things really make all the difference when you’re doing something like this, and you need to be in that mindset like a fighter, like an athlete. And all of those things really, really helped me, in ways that I don’t even think I realized.”
Perhaps even harder to face than the physical walls she had to climb in order to convincingly play Shields were the mental challenges she had to face in the film‘s long pre-production process. The project initially started at Universal in 2016, with Barry Jenkins being hired to pen a script based on the documentary “T-Rex: Her Fight for Gold” and the option of him directing on the table as well. He’d eventually pass the project off to Morrison, a longtime cinematographer making her directorial debut with the film. Shooting was set to being in 2020, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was set to go back into production in 2021, but one of its stars at the time, Ice Cube, refused to be vaccinated, halting the shoot and sending “The Fire Inside” into turnaround.
“Just like everyone during that time, you thought, ‘OK, I’ll be back in two weeks, be back in a month.’ And it just kept going and going,” Destiny said in reflecting on the film’s struggles. “And then when I got the final call of Rachel basically saying that it was dropped, that was really heartbreaking. That was like a complete down-and-out crying moment, and we just didn’t really know what was next. So when that was happening, it was pretty dark.”
Thankfully, Universal managed to offload the project to Amazon MGM, who finally got things on track in 2022 and unveiled the film at the 2024 Toronto Film Festival to rave reviews.
“The Fire Inside” streams on Prime Video December 25 from Amazon MGM.
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