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Director-writer-editor Ashley Avis shares a deep connection to the story of Black Beauty. The novel by Anna Sewell changed the course of her life and inspired her love of horses. So, it seems only fitting that she gets to introduce this beloved story to a new generation. Pop Culturalist caught up with Ashley for an exclusive interview where we chatted about paying respect to the source material while adapting it for a modern-day audience, the letter she wrote to Kate Winslet [voice of Beauty], and the film’s timely message.

PC: You have an incredibly deep connection with the novel. When you set out to make this adaptation, how challenging was it to strike the balance between paying homage to the source material while also bringing something new?
Ashley: It was really, really important to me to honor the original messages, themes, characters, and events of the novel. It was challenging in so many ways to find the modern-day parallels or draw an event from the novel and change it to ebb and flow it into a modern-day light so that we could include it in the film.

Growing up with the book and having that novel inspired my love of horses. In a way, Black Beauty really shaped the course of my life, so honoring Anna Sewell’s message was really important to me. We made some changes to bring the movie to a modern audience, obviously making Jo and Beauty female, which was very timely: giving a voice to underrepresented ones today. I felt very strongly about it, as did our producers.

The biggest change, of course, is that Beauty’s origin story sets her up as a Mustang, born free in the American West, who’s rounded up and taken away from her family. Her journey with Jo expounds upon the friendship that Black Beauty and Jo Green form in the original book. We have more of a through line and more of an arc to their journey in our version of the film.

But, Black Beauty becoming a wild horse was not accidental; it was very purposeful because Anna Sewell set out in creating Black Beauty to make a change for the horses. We decided to identify an under-illuminated issue that horses are going through today, namely wild horses being rounded up. I’m excited to see if we can do what she set out to do and make some change.

PC: I read that when you’re approaching actors to be a part of projects, you often write letters to them. You spent four to five hours writing a letter to Kate Winslet. What was in that letter?
Ashley: I very authentically told her exactly why she was the perfect voice for Beauty. I explained that it’s hard to sit down and write a screenplay with anyone in mind—and I tend not to do that—but from day one, sentence one, her voice just rang through my head.

I’ve admired her work for so many years, her gumption, her elegance, and her intelligence. She stands for what she believes in, but she has a delicacy to her and such a presence. I couldn’t help it. Her voice was in my head throughout writing the screenplay. I was so elated when she said yes.

In my letter, I went into some of the themes and some of the changes and why they were made. I know that she was impacted by some of the scenes with the wild horse roundups and we talked about them when we were recording her voiceover. She’s a woman who stands for what she believes in, and right and wrong. Beyond being an extraordinary talent, she’s an extraordinary person. I feel so grateful she said yes.

PC: You filmed close to three hundred hours’ worth of footage. What was the process like editing it down to what the audience sees today?
Ashley: It was a year of seven days a week. My hair’s dyed now, but I was going gray at thirty-three. [laughs] It was the biggest challenge of my entire career. I’ve been cutting my own work for over a decade, but I’ve never taken on a full feature. I’m so grateful that Constantine and the producers gave me a shot to do this because I knew that nobody is ever going to care as much as you do about anything.

But with that amount of exhaustive footage for a film, that’s incredibly unique—where even if Beauty isn’t speaking, she’s speaking on camera, and that’s the way we want to capture her through our photography, finding the authentic reactions of the horse, the body language, Beauty’s eye being present, her attention being present, the way the ears are going. All of those reactions and that authenticity were so important to me because we were constantly turning over.

I’m so glad about how much footage we have, but we also had a lot of documentary footage that I shot with my team prior to filming Black Beauty, so we had two weeks of full-time doc footage to go through as well. I can’t find my car in a parking lot, but I have a pretty good mind for memorizing footage. It was challenging, but a joy.

PC: You wrote, directed, and edited the film. How early on in the process did you realize you wanted to wear all these different hats? How has your previous experience prepared you for this film?
Ashley: I started a small production company when I was twenty-two. I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I dabble in journalism. I thought I might become a young adult novelist, but then I discovered screenplays in my teens going to school in New York, and that was instant. Screenplays, to me, are like poetry. Eventually in my early twenties, I realized I wanted to be a director.

Wearing all the different hats, I didn’t know right away that I wanted to edit the film. I never thought that they would give me the opportunity to, just based on experience. I mean, that’s a huge leap of faith, because it’s so much time if it went sideways. I knew that, of course, I wanted to write and direct.

My previous experience, grinding out many, many years of little commercial work that turned into mid-range commercial work that turned into bigger commercial work, which turned into going out to investors and pitching stories and ideas, raising money for our first two independent films and developing a style over the course of a little over a decade made me ready for an opportunity like this. It finally was the right time. My dad always says, “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” That was very much this film.

Wanting to edit it might’ve been a secret desire in the back of my head. I know I mentioned it jokingly to Jeremy Bolt in my early days on set, though I didn’t think they would give me the opportunity to do it. But actually, when I was in South Africa, I bought a Mac computer and cut our AFM promo with the footage that we had in our pre-shoot days. I showed them that and I started cutting scenes.

We were shooting six days a week, so on my off-day, I was in my little apartment cutting scenes, and that gave me the confidence that I could hopefully do it. I’m so grateful that they let me.

To keep up with Ashley, follow her on Twitter and Instagram. Watch Black Beauty on Disney+ today.

Photo Credit: Alexandra Trustman