“Look, I’m a girl from St. Louis, so being a part of this was a blessed project, for sure,” Kimberly Steward said.
Her excitement lit up the entire area in the Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis, where she conducted rounds of media interviews Friday, November 4, a day ahead of the St. Louis International Film Festival showing of Kenny Lonergan’s “Manchester by the Sea.” Reporters came and went, clamoring to discuss her role as executive producer of the film by way of her company, K Period Media.
Steward has hit the ground running in Hollywood since her first feature film executive producer credit came to be a darling of last year’s Sundance Film Festival. “Oprah said in this awesome article in Variety with Ava DuVernay that people want to feel included and have a seat at the table with the people who are making real decisions,” Steward said. “In some ways, I was ushered in with a great seat at the table.”
According to fellow “Manchester” producer and Academy Award winner Matt Damon, she led herself there by providing financial backing for the film when no one else would.
A convoluted six-year legal battle between Lonergan, producers and the studio surrounding his sophomore film “Margaret” essentially made the filmmaker persona non grata when it came to getting funding and industry support. Steward and her K Period partner Lauren Beck stepped in as the saving grace for his follow up.
“We had nobody except K Period,” Damon was quoted by Deadline.com.
The film was Damon’s idea. He presented the story to Lonergan and signed on to be the film’s star and a producer, but the money wasn’t rolling in. While he was still passionate about making sure “Manchester” made it to the big screen, scheduling conflicts meant that Damon could no longer appear in the film. (Casey Affleck ultimately took the role of a lonely janitor forced to confront his painful past in “Manchester,” which also stars Michelle Williams.)
Steward read the script, which was also written by Lonergan, and developed an instant connection and willful determination to bring “Manchester” to the big screen.
“I didn’t think about the film’s potential for success, I thought about how it’s going to affect people – that’s where the excitement comes from,” Steward said. “It’s like, ‘Oh my God, people who come to see this movie might be able to heal from the perspective of grief.”
Steward’s gamble paid off in ways she never imagined. She admits “her mouth still falls open” when she hears Damon sing the praises of her company’s willingness to take the risk on Lonergan and “Manchester.”
She fought back tears talking about the film’s premiere at Sundance, seeing her company’s name among the credits and the emotions that came as 1,300 people sat around her captivated by what they were watching. “I could cry right now just thinking about it,” Steward said.
It was at Sundance that Amazon Studios purchased rights to the film for a reported $10 million after a bidding war with Sony Pictures Classics, Universal, Fox Searchlight and Lionsgate. The staggering price tag was second only to Nate Parker’s “The Birth of a Nation,” which sold for more than $17 million.
“Certain things make you say, ‘Man, this really happened!’” Steward said.
She can’t bring herself to speak out loud about the strong possibility of Oscar contention for “Manchester” – perhaps not to jinx it. But if the film were to be nominated for “Best Picture,” Steward would be only the second African-American woman to be nominated as a producer in the history of the Academy Awards. Oprah Winfrey is the other one.
“If anything happens with any kind of awards, I will definitely be giving Oprah a shout out,” Steward said. “What she’s done as a filmmaker and a producer has opened doors for me and so many others.”
Producing with purpose
Her company K Period is only two years old, but her love of films and passion for storytelling in various formats made the transition into film a natural progression. A 2003 graduate of Webster University, she earned an undergraduate degree in broadcast journalism and entered the publishing world, where she worked at magazines like Women’s World Daily.
She always had a special love of film and became especially appreciative of the creative process. She founded K Period out of a desire to create access for people to make meaningful films that wouldn’t otherwise live beyond the script or storyboard.
Her first foray was with Thomas Allen Harris’ NAACP Image Award-winning 2014 documentary “Through a Lens Darkly.”
“I’m able to help first-time filmmakers who don’t get a chance to work with big studios,” Steward said. “I know God has me in it because I am supposed to do something for other people.”
Part of her mission is to be a counter-narrative to infamy of what goes on behind the scenes in the industry.
“Treat people fair, be an honest person, be transparent, uplift people, encourage them, have patience and operate from a place of kindness and love,” Steward said are her goals. “All of those are things that I’m trying to reinvigorate within Hollywood.”
These are lessons Steward said she learned from her parents David and Thelma Steward. She joked that her father, founder and chairman of WorldWide Technology, scratches his head because she and her brother (David Steward II of Lion Forge Comics) went in the opposite direction of his path by pursuing artistic and creative fields.
But what she does through K Period actually mirrors her parents’ unyielding support of the arts through philanthropy.
“Like them, I’m able to pass that blessing on,” Steward said.
“If you can inspire people then you’re a leader. And that’s how I want to lead, by inspiring and encouraging other people. I got that desire from watching my parents do it so eloquently.”
“Manchester by the Sea” opens in theatres nationwide on December 2. The film is rated R with a running time of 137 minutes.
