Reginald Hudlin Directed Kamala Harris Biopic To Precede VP Speech At DNC On Thursday
EXCLUSIVE: Vice President Kamala Harris has turned to an old friend and Hollywood veteran to help reintroduce her to the nation and the world at the Democratic National Convention this week.
Reginald Hudlin has directed the short film on Harris that will precede the VP taking to the stage on Thursday for her acceptance speech as the party’s historic presidential candidate. Tracing Harris from her childhood in Oakland, CA to the corridors of power in Sacramento and Washington D.C., the August 22-debuting biopic is about 10 minutes long, we’ve learned.
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“Reggie is the perfect person to do this,” an insider at the convention in Chicago says. “He knows her (Harris) well, they’re friends, and he clearly has the chops.”
The acclaimed CAA-repped filmmaker’s spouse Chrisette Hudlin was the one who introduced Harris (then California Attorney General) to Doug Emhoff (then Tinseltown lawyer) in 2013. With the Hudlins in attendance, the power couple were married on August 22, 2014.
To say the Sidney director and former BET president is friends with the Vice President and has the skill to put together the biopic are understatements.
Frequently a presence at official functions since Harris scored the number two slot in 2021, the Hudlins were also deep pocketed and high-profile supporters of Harris in her successful 2016 Senate bid, her short lived 2020 presidential bid and later her vice presidential campaign.
Also, in an unintended twist, Harris and Emhoff’s wedding date is exactly a decade before the poll-surging Harris will become the first Black woman and the first person of direct Asian decent to be nominated for the White House by a major American political party
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Hudlin follows a long line of Hollywood creatives who have helmed the convention movie for the Democratic nominee, one of the more substantive contributions that the industry makes to a campaign, given the large audience. The list includes Shonda Rhimes for Hillary Clinton in 2016, David Guggenheim for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, James Moll and Steven Spielberg for John Kerry, Spike Jonze for Al Gore and Harry Thomason for Bill Clinton.
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As Deadline exclusively reported last week, Dawn Porter has directed a short that will be shown tonight at the DNC ahead of President Joe Biden’s keynote speech. Along with the retiring incumbent himself, Luther: Never Too Much helmer Porter interviewed former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, among others, for the film. No stranger to the halls of power, in 2020 Porter directed and produced the feature documentary John Lewis: Good Trouble, along with a short on the civil rights leader and Harris mentor that was shown at the virtual convention that year.
The DNC runs from today until August 22 with live coverage on cable news and online, with primetime excepts on the broadcast networks.
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