“I Didn’t Want to Be Saved”: Gabrielle Union Talks ‘Bring It On,’ 20 Years Later (2024)

Twenty years ago this week, a bubbly sports comedy set in the cutthroat world of competitive cheerleading debuted at number one and became an immediate teen staple. But the legacy of Bring It On extends far beyond helping an entire generation understand the difference between jazz hands and spirit fingers. In the two decades since its release, Mean Girls has been the only teen comedy that’s come close to matching Bring It On’s impact on the pop-cultural lexicon, spawning everything from a Broadway musical co-penned by Lin-Manuel Miranda to four direct-to-video sequels. As one of the all-time great sports films, Bring It On crystallized an entire subculture while most of the Cheer cast were still doing somersaults in diapers.

Bring It On starred Kirsten Dunst as T-T-T-Torrance Shipman, the San Diego Toros’ new captain attempting to lead her team to continued glory at the national cheer championships. The cast of breakout stars also featured Eliza Dushku and Jesse Bradford with future Ant-Man director Peyton Reed at the helm. But it’s possible Bring It On’s biggest calling card is launching the career of a relatively unknown Gabrielle Union in one of her first major roles.

As head captain of the Compton Clovers—the Toros’ less affluent competitors—a then 27-year-old Union was best known for a handful of film and sitcom appearances when she took on the role after some deliberation. Union’s Isis is a headstrong and ferociously committed leader who gives Bring It On’s satire such a sharply resonant bite. With Union’s performance steering it, Bring It On ushered in a bolder, more socially conscious era for teen comedies, foregoing white-savior tropes and sharply dissecting female rivalry.

“I didn’t want to be saved and I didn’t want the Clovers to be indebted,” Union recently told Vogue when we caught up with the actor over the phone from her home in Los Angeles. “I wouldn’t have been okay with being saved by anyone else. That’s me in real life and that’s me in Bring It On.” To celebrate the anniversary of the teen classic, Union told Vogue what went into filming those intricate routines, problematic dialogue she asked the filmmakers to change, and why Universal Pictures wouldn’t lend her the original Clovers’ uniform for Halloween.

This was just your fourth film and it ended up being a huge breakout moment for you and your castmates. What do you remember about the time in your life right before Bring It On came along?

I really wanted to be in this other cheerleading movie called Sugar & Spice about bank-robbing cheerleaders, but they didn’t wanna go Black on any of the lead roles. I was coming off of 10 Things I Hate About You, She’s All That, and Love & Basketball back-to-back, so I was looking for my next gig when this came up. It was called Cheer Fever, and they wanted me for the table read. The script was a little cringe-y, so when they offered me the job, I said, “Can we make some changes?” And they were open.

How would you characterize Isis as originally written?

She was like a bad stereotype. There was a line in the original script that was like, “Meow! Me-gonna-ow you! My nails are long, sharp, and ready to slash!”…. Huh? And that girl ends up at U.C. Berkeley? How did girls from Compton talk in their minds? How about we make her a very clear leader where her path to cheer justice is done with more class and dignity but also justifiable anger. She doesn’t need to speak in made-up, Blaxploitation dialogue.

The director, Peyton Reed, said at the time that you “found what was cool about that character in ways few actresses could,” and that the two of you talked a lot about how to approach Isis. What were those discussions like?

Well, when we started filming, the script was in flux. I was talking to Peyton the other day and he said, “Do you remember when we brought in Gary Hardwick to rewrite some of the Clovers’ dialogue?” I didn’t remember that, but it made sense. I ended up doing The Brothers and Deliver Us From Eva with Gary, so I knew he and Peyton were cool. I just remember Peyton would be in my trailer before every scene, going, “What would Isis say here?” We kind of rewrote it as we went along, but the credited screenwriters were not a part of that dialogue. The shooting script was not what ended up onscreen.

What degree of athleticism would you say you went into the shoot with? I read that you and Kirsten both cheered in school.

Just in junior high because you didn’t have to be popular to be a cheerleader. I’ve been an athlete my entire life, playing soccer, basketball, and softball, but those don’t prepare you for the sport of cheerleading at all. And you can tell that I struggled because there are a lot of close-ups so it looks like I’m doing the same sh*t that everyone else is doing even though I’m not as good. I’m matching most of the more dance-heavy choreography, but the more challenging cheerleading stuff? No.

It definitely doesn’t come across that you’re struggling to keep up! What did the training look like?

The Toros had four weeks and the Clovers had nine days of cheerleading boot camp to learn all of the routines you see in the film. They said the Toros got more time because they had more routines to learn and more actors who had to learn them. Also there were more professional cheerleaders in the Clovers’ cast along with me and the singing group Blaque. They were young girls who’d gone straight from a very long tour with *NSYNC right into filming, and at that point they were so over each other. They got all of the choreography way faster than I did.

The cheer scenes are shot in a way that really shows off the fact that all the actors are doing their own stunts and choreography. Was there ever any discussion about using cheer doubles?

No. I don’t know if that’s because they didn’t have the budget or they just assumed we’d eventually nail the routines if we [practiced enough]. The really difficult parts of the Clovers’ routines that you see in the film are done by the professional cheerleaders. We each leaned into our strongest areas and were able to hide any of our flaws in the choreography.

You graduated from UCLA with a degree in sociology just a few years before your career really took off with Bring It On. How much did your studies there come to play into the way you approached character work?

Sociology is basically the study of human interaction, intergroup interaction, conflict and conflict resolution, so it influences everything I do in my career. I knew what it would have taken for Isis to get into U.C. Berkeley. Knowing that that’s where she ended up, I just sort of worked backwards in creating a very strong, intelligent leader who was also justifiably f*cking angry.

It's interesting because I once saw this poll someone made of great cinema villains and Isis was one of them. I was like, “When the f*ck did I become a villain?” Why is she a villain? For wanting accountability? Does calling someone out make you a villain? When Black women ask for accountability, no matter the tone, some people hear aggression or rage. They make me the angry Black woman versus someone whose work and intellectual property has been stolen, repackaged, and used to win national championships.

A lot of discourse around the film reiterates that it’s Torrance and her squad who stole the Clovers’ cheers and were the real villains all along.

Right. For some people, there’s no space for Black rage. Also when people do their impersonations of me in the role, I just wonder, Is that how I sounded? More people seem to remember the spoof of Isis in Not Another Teen Movie. We never say, “It’s already been broughten!” in Bring It On.

Bring It On feels especially ahead of its time considering there wasn’t much of a conversation around cultural appropriation in popular culture at that point. Why do you think a teen sports comedy was such an effective way of addressing themes related to race and class?

Bring It On is a fun teen movie, but there’s so much more when you pull back the layers. It allows white people to see themselves as complicit in cultural appropriation, but the takeaway for Black audiences or marginalized audiences are so different. It told them, “You’re not crazy. Your emotional, spiritual, and physical labor has been stolen and repackaged. Cultural appropriation is real and the lack of credit for your work and labor is real.”

Watching it again, the scene that most struck me is when Torrance visits Isis with a check to help pay the Clovers’ way to Nationals. Isis refuses to let the Toros buy their way to a clear conscience. Were you and the filmmakers cautious to make sure Bring It On steered clear of any white-savior tropes?

I didn’t want to be saved and I didn’t want the Clovers to be indebted. I wouldn’t have been okay with being saved by anyone else. That’s me in real life and that’s me in Bring It On. I do not find the concept of “Great White Hope” or white-savior movies appealing or entertaining in the least. I don’t like them, I don’t watch them, and I certainly don’t want to be in them if I can at all help it, so that scene was necessary. The Clovers had been doing it on their own this whole time and they weren’t about to accept the Toros’ guilt money.

Was there anything you learned over the course of making Bring It On that you’ve carried with you through your career since?

Me and my friends have this saying: “We all we got.” And that’s really one of the things that was driven home in Bring It On. Sets have to be a safe place. We don’t need to sell each other down a river to have things to talk about in interviews. We don’t need to betray each other’s trust and be disloyal to this collective experience. Everyone in the cast was and still is very protective of each other, and we still hold that experience sacred. None of us felt like we were for sale. The first rule of fight club is, don’t talk about fight club. That’s how real bonds are built. But you can have fun and be dumb and make stupid mistakes while trusting that we’re gonna have your back.

The internet blew up last Halloween, when you posted a photo of you and your daughter wearing matching Clovers costumes. I couldn’t find any sources to confirm it, but was that the original uniform?

No! I asked Universal to borrow it and they wouldn’t give it up.

They wouldn’t let Isis borrow her own uniform?

I know. I mean, it should be in the f*cking Smithsonian. But my stylist Thomas Christos had replicas made in two days. What’s crazy is that my little cousin DD—that’s what we call Saweetie—came out in a Clovers uniform at our Halloween party to surprise me! I didn’t know she was performing and she had no idea I was gonna be wearing the same costume.

I would be mortified if I showed up to a Halloween party wearing the same Clovers uniform as you.

It was so dope. I mean, great minds think alike, great families think alike. She’s literally 20 years younger than me, from a whole different generation of cousins, so for whatever reason, I don’t think people believed she was my real cousin, but she’s an actual blood relative. I’m so proud of her. She’s my first stop if I ever need a kidney.

What does the rest of your family think of the film?

I don’t even know if the kids have seen it, to be honest. Maybe they have. Hold on just a second, let me ask.

I’ll be right here.

[To Zaire Wade] Have you ever watched Bring It On before?... A long time ago? Okay, what did you think? [...] He said, “I like Bring It On, it’s a classic.” There you have it, that’s the most we’ve ever talked about it.

And he’s right, it is a classic!

It covered ground that no other teen movie has ever covered then or since. Ever. Like, in history. It would’ve been as relevant 60 years ago as it was 20 years ago, and it’ll probably still be relevant 20 years from now. It’s the subject matter and how we handled it so unflinchingly with humor. It’s really stood the test of time and still packs the same wallop, but in a campy, good time.

I feel like Bring It On was initially sold as this cheeky satire, but when did you first realize it was being embraced for the campiness?

It wasn’t until much later that I realized Bring It On was even campy. I mean, the original Hairspray is my all-time favorite movie. I watched it a hundred times growing up and know every word to movies like Grease and Grease 2.

Were you caught off-guard by the tone when you saw it all come together onscreen?

One of the only times I’ve seen it was at the premiere, but we were yelling and screaming through the entire thing because we were so drunk. And cheering. You kinda miss how normal people are gonna receive it because you’re so attached to everything happening onscreen. I love a camp classic, I just never thought of Bring It On that way—at least until much much later when I saw whole parties where people would dress up as the Toros and Clovers and do all the dances. I realized Bring It On is like other people’s Hairspray. It’s their Grease 2!

This interview has been edited and condensed.