The opening scene for the Shirley trailer is an aerial shot of the U.S. Capitol, Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.
But watch the entire two-minute promotion for Shirley, the Netflix biopic about U.S. Rep. Shirley Chilsholm's 1972 presidential campaign, and you'll see century-old Cincinnati row houses and other locations used here when filming in the winter of 2021-22.
Some Greater Cincinnati residents also could see themselves: I counted more than 125 extras in the trailer from some of the nine casting calls D. Lynn Meyers posted in November and December 2021.
The Oscar- and Emmy-winning actress, whose mother moved back to the Mount Healthy area after raising daughters Regina and Reina King in California, stars as Chisholm, the first Black woman to be elected to Congress and the first to seek a major party's nomination for president.
Regina and Reina spent 15 years developing the film, according to People magazine. Netflix announced in January that it premieres Friday, March 22, two weeks after the "Super Tuesday" primary vote.
Chisholm, a Brooklyn school teacher, is offended when a man asserts that she "sounds like every other politician" in the film. She responds by saying, "Do I look like every other politician?"
The script, by Oscar-winner John Ridley (12 Years A Slave), gives King plenty of opportunities to expound on Chisholm's historic run in 1972, when Richard Nixon won re-election in a landslide over Democrat Sen. George McGovern.
"I'm paving the road for a lot of people looking like me to get elected . . . I don't think I'm special. I just need to remind people what's possible. . . . The people of America are watching us," she says.
Shirley also stars the late Lance Riddick (the John Wick movies, White House Down) who died last March; Terrence Howard; Lucas Hedges; Brian Stokes Mitchell; Christina Jackson; Michael Cherrie; Dorian Missick; Amirah Vann; W. Earl Brown; and Brad James.
Grammy winner Samara Joy recently told Variety she has a new original song in Shirley. She coyly added, "I can't tell you the artist I collaborated with. That's a secret."
In January, Regina King told Entertainment Weekly she wanted the film released in March at the peak of the presidential primaries.
"Instead of trying to release it during any normal cycle, we thought, wouldn't it be more impactful to release it during a presidential election year? As a team, we felt that is probably the best way we could possibly honor Shirley: to release her in a space that she created for herself," King said.
Shirley is the second film produced here by Participant, which won best picture Academy Awards for Spotlight and Green Book, and shot Dark Waters here in 2019 starring Mark Ruffalo as Cincinnati attorney Robert Bilott, by taking advantage of the Ohio Motion Pictures Tax Credit program. Ohio lawmakers have increased the tax credits from $40 million to $75 million beginning July 2024.
