Claressa Shields: ‘I’m not here for people to cry and feel sorry for me’
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The two-time Olympic gold medal-winning boxer’s life has been turned into rousing drama The Fire Inside, written by Oscar winner Barry Jenkins. Claressa Shields was two months removed from defending her Olympic gold medal at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games when an email from Hollywood landed in her inbox. Universal Studios wanted to make a movie about her life story. For Shields, who had spent much of her career fighting for recognition in a sport that marginalized women when they weren’t ignoring them entirely, the offer felt like more than just a career milestone. It was a rare mainstream acknowledgment of her achievements and a chance to amplify to a wider audience the struggles she had endured in and out of the ring.
![[Bryan Armen Graham]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2017/10/06/Bryan-Armen-Graham,-L.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“I never checked my emails back then,” Shields says with a laugh. “But I saw the subject line, and it said something about a movie. I thought, ‘A movie about my life? OK, let’s see what they’re talking about.’” That email kicked off a series of phone calls and meetings with the Oscar-winning screenwriter Barry Jenkins and other industry heavyweights. “We negotiated for a year. I was only 20, so I made sure I had a lawyer,” she recalls. “I wasn’t going to just sign anything. But once the contract was finalized, the ball started rolling.”.
![[film still of a female boxer]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/5985966e98574dfb8428cf066daf11682cd11bb8/0_70_3000_1800/master/3000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
That ball has now become a feature film, The Fire Inside, which opens in the US on Christmas Day. Helmed by the first-time director Rachel Morrison with Ryan Destiny in the leading role, the movie chronicles Shields’s rise from an impoverished childhood in Flint, Michigan, to becoming the most decorated female boxer in history. Shields describes the experience of working with Jenkins as pivotal to ensuring her story was told authentically. “We had a four-hour conversation about my life,” she says of the initial phone call that courted her approval. “I told him, ‘Listen, this isn’t a sad story. I’m not here for people to cry and feel sorry for me. I’m a winner. I’m a conqueror.’”.
![[Woman draped in American flag]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/3666fbe4aeaec14b0edffc62bd2813628b4a92e4/0_32_2173_1303/master/2173.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
