‘Shirley’ on Netflix True Story: How Regina King’s Movie Honors the Legacy of Shirley Chisholm

Regina King’s new Netflix movie, Shirley—which began streaming today—is doing its part to uphold the legacy of Shirley Chisholm. Shirley Chisholm is a name that ought to be as well known as Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X when it comes to the history of the Civil Rights Movement, yet to this day she is woefully overlooked in American history books.

Written and directed by John Ridley (who also wrote the script for the Oscar-winning film 12 Years a Slave), the movie focuses specifically on Chisholm’s 1972 national campaign for president, in which Chisholm was many of the many candidates vying for the Democratic nomination to run against sitting Republican president, Richard Nixon. Of course, anyone who knows there American history will know that nomination ultimately went to George McGovern, who went on to lose the presidential quite handily to Nixon. (Nixon, in fact, got 60.7 percent of the popular vote, the most of any Republican Party presidential candidate ever.) Shoulda gone with Chisholm!

King, who also produced the film, stars as Chisholm in the movie, and has been trying to get this biopic made for over a decade. Now, she can finally share Chisholm’s story with the world. (Or, at least with Netflix subscribers!)

Is the Netflix movie Shirley based on a true story?

Yes, the Shirley movie on Netflix is based on the true story of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress (in 1968), and the first Black politician to run for major-party nomination for President of the United States (in 1972).

Chisholm was born in Brooklyn, New York to immigrant parents, and spent many years of her childhood in Barbados. Though she didn’t manage to nab that presidential nomination, she continued to serve in Congress until she retired in 1983. She went on to teach Mount Holyoke College, as well as co-founded the National Political Congress of Black Women. She was offered a nomination to become U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica in 1993, but was forced to decline due to health issues. She died at the age of 80 in 2005.

How accurate is the Shirley Chisholm movie on Netflix?

Like most movies based on a true story, certain facts were changed, invented, or omitted for the Shirley movie in the interest of creating a watchable, entertaining Hollywood film. Certainly, we don’t know what Chisholm’s conversations with, say, her husband Conrad (played by Michael Cherrie in the movie) behind closed doors were really like. Those kinds of conversations were imagined by writer/director John Ridley.

That said, Shirley star Regina King—who also produced the film with her producing partner and sister Reina King via Royal Ties Productions—did extensive research in the hopes of making her portrayal as accurate as possible. In fact, the King sisters had been working on the film and learning about Chisholm for over 15 years before the movie finally came to fruition.

The initial movie idea, King said in an interview for the Shirley production notes, came in response to the sheer number of people that the sisters encountered who’d never heard the name Shirley Chisholm. ” After so many times of having that experience, we thought, ‘Wait a minute, this is not right. When you hear just even the last name Chisholm, you should think Shirley,'” King explained. “We set out to tell her story and early on we worked with a team of writers including Sonya Winton who was very good at giving us even a deeper history lesson on who Shirley was and what she had been doing since she ran for president.”

The Oscar-winner listened to countless interviews and watched countless videos of the real Chisholm, and worked with a dialect coach to nail her accent and mannerisms. “Having spent time in Barbados and New York, she would sound Bajan sometimes and other times like someone from Brooklyn and other times she sounded more scholarly, and sometimes it was a mix of all three because that’s who she is,” King explained. “I promise you, all of the videos and audio that you see of Shirley, you will see so many different sounds and looks.”

The production also had real-life Congresswoman Barbara Lee on set as a consultant. Lee, who is 77, was a friend of Chisholm’s, and is even played in the movie by actor Christina Jackson. “Having Barbara Lee come and visit the set was definitely like she was giving us Shirley’s blessing in a lot of ways. I mean, they had such a beautiful relationship,” King said in that same interview.

King’s sister, producer Reina King, also appeared in the film as Shirley Chisholm’s sister, Muriel St. Hill, and consulted the real thing. Reina said in the Shirley press notes interview, “I actually got a chance to meet and talk to her sister, Muriel who I play in the movie, so that was really special. Unfortunately, she passed away before we started production, so I hope we made her proud.”

The younger King added that two books, including Chisholm’s 1970 autobiography Unbought and Unbossed and her 1974 follow-up The Good Fight—which detailed her 1972 presidential campaign—were key to their research, as were “documentaries, any news footage, and articles, everything that we could pull to put us in the place that told us who Shirley was.”