Elizabeth Banks has a knack for portraying women who are easy to underestimate, from the bombshell right-wing media personality on 30 Rock to the Hunger Games’ foppish Effie Trinket. The same can be said for Banks herself. The actor—who will soon play a conservative feminist rival to Cate Blanchett’s Phyllis Schlafly in next year’s FX biopic miniseries Mrs. America—has become a prolific producer. Her company, Brownstone Productions, is behind the Pitch Perfect movie franchise as well as the Hulu series Shrill, starring Aidy Bryant. In 2015, Banks added another position to her résumé: directing Pitch Perfect 2, which became one of the highest-grossing female-directed films, earning $287 million globally. Now she’s doing all three jobs plus one more—writing—in the latest Charlie’s Angels, in theaters this month.
Fast Company: Charlie’s Angels is a continuation of the 2000 movie, which was inspired by the 1976 television series. Why did 2019 seem like the right time to bring it back?
Elizabeth Banks: Growing up, I watched reruns of the TV show, and my sisters and I idolized the idea of Charlie’s Angels: These women went to the police academy, they did all the right things, and still the system did not allow them to truly live up to their full potential. That continues to be an issue, and so it felt like, Why not tackle that again right now? I felt this was a good time to remind people that there’s tons of potential in the 51% of the human race that we are not tapping into.
FC: The original show may have had a feminist premise, but the way it sometimes catered to the male gaze hasn’t aged very well. How did you update it for today’s audience?
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