Gabrielle Union recently spoke about her classic movie ‘Bring It On’ and how the fictional all-Black cheerleading group known as The Clovers were only involved in a third of the movie. According to Union, the filmmakers shot “fake” scenes for the trailer to make it seem like the black actors and white actors were getting the same amount of screen time.
“The Clovers were only in like a third of the movie, and when they started showing it to test audiences, The Clovers tested through the roof,” Union explained to Noah Callahan-Bever on the latest episode of Bloomberg’s original series “Idea Generation.”
“They were like, ‘We need more with The Clovers but we can’t add it to the movie,’” Union continued. “We’re going to shoot scenes, fake scenes, that will only be in the trailer to create the illusion that it was like a 50-50 movie. But what’s interesting is, the people spoke. When the people spoke, they were like OK we got to deliver on – at least fake deliver. And the rest is kind of history. It’s wild to me.”
Gabrielle Union played the character of Isis in the movie “Bring It On”. The film was released in 2000 and also starred Kirsten Dunst, Eliza Dushku, and Jesse Bradford. Gabrielle Union’s portrayal of Isis, the captain of the East Compton Clovers cheerleading squad, was highly praised and helped to establish her as a leading actress in Hollywood.
There are a total of 6 Bring It On films but Union only starred in the 2000 movie. The actress did previously say she was open to to a possible sequel if it came to her.
Union already has an idea of where her character, Isis, would be two decades later, telling Entertainment Tonight that she would love to play the role from the perspective of a mother whose daughter is now part of a cheerleading team herself.
“Imagine if her daughter was, ya know, a high stepper from Jackson State, Hawthorne State or Hampton,” she gushed. “There’s so many forms of cheerleading that we don’t get to celebrate. The possibilities are endless.”
Her ideas about a sequel came just months after she reiterated her stance on a potential follow-up in an interview with ComicBook, saying, “We all have an interest in revisiting it. During the pandemic, around the 20th anniversary of Bring it On, we all were, you know, together all the time doing these panels and talking about the movie and the making of the movie and all of our wild hijinks.
“But yeah, then we got really serious about, “We should update this”, you know, like bring it up to where are they now.”