At one point during David Michôd’s boxing legend Christy Martin biopic, succinctly and cleanly titled Christy, I became so overwhelmed by shock at what was transpiring on screen that I began to wonder how she was still alive, here at the screening I was attending in advance of interviews the next morning. If I weren’t participating in such a press opportunity, I would have assumed she died. Honestly, during the film’s most intense scene, I still began to wonder if someone was pulling a prank on me and setting me up to interview a dead woman, looking over my shoulder behind me to confirm that Christy Martin is still alive and present in the flesh.
Christy (with Sydney Sweeney in the title role) is about much more than boxing. As the real Christy Martin puts it (a coal miner’s daughter from Southern West Virginia and an underdog who develops a knack for fighting), this is a life story, and the film is all the better for it. This is a story about repressed sexual identity, domestic violence, support systems, thorny family dynamics, and, above all else, survival. And while there are many highs in the ring (she is the first woman boxer to have competed on pay-per-view), terror generally looms in Christy’s corner of the ring and personal life, with a chilling performance from Ben Foster as her demanding manager and abusive husband Jim Martin (notably roughly twice her age).
This is a film that has all the essential ingredients of a standard biopic, yet is also a tightly observed character study chronicling a successful part of Christy Martin’s life that was also mired in horror. Physically and emotionally scarred from the past but not broken, Christy Martin is now telling her story on the big screen while advocating for domestic abuse help for quite some time. It’s another avenue to accomplish her goal of helping several people a day, hopefully ensuring they never have to go through what she went through. Enjoy the interview below:
It’s wonderful to meet you! I was at the screening last night, and that was an awesome receptive environment.
Thank you. It was a great night.
It also looked like you were watching the movie. I’m assuming you’ve seen it before last night, too, but is some of the movie’s content triggering or hard to watch, especially in the second half? Or is there something cathartic about watching the movie that helps you make peace with the past?
Last night was the third time that I had actually seen the movie, and the first time I watched it, I was kind of not sure that I focused 100% on the little details. The second time I watched it was at TIFF, and I really took in every second of the movie, and it was very tough. It was triggering last night. I watched it with a little bit of a wall up because I wanted to protect myself from those triggers.
Speaking of those triggers, what was it like seeing Ben Foster for the first time, like either on set or in the movie? Was there a traumatic response to that?
Let me tell you, Ben Foster was 100% Jim Martin. During filming, I had to stay completely away from him. If he was in a room, I made sure I was in a different room. This guy is a great actor, and he was Jim Martin so much that it affected not only me but even my friends who came to be extras in the movie; when they saw him, the hair on their arms stood up. He made their skin crawl. It was scary how great he was as Jim Martin.
I believe it; he’s always a chameleon as an actor. I thought that was his voice while watching the movie, but I wasn’t sure it was him until the end credits.
Yeah, he was so much Jim… the voice, the movements, the expressions. I honestly don’t even know how he got him down so well, but he really is a method actor; he became Jim Martin. It was too much for me. I truly stayed away from him. It was just too much.
I can’t blame you. What was it about director David Michôd and his wife/co-writer Mirrah Foulkes that made you feel comfortable entrusting your story to them?
It was the comfort and the trust that they gave out. I actually had met David on a Zoom call a couple of years before filming, and I really liked him as a person. I liked the conversation. I liked that he realized my story wasn’t a sports story. It’s a life story, and that’s the way it needed to be put out there. It needed to be promoted as a life story. That’s what really drew me to David. And then Mirrah, his partner, is a great writer. We sat for hours and talked as she came and visited in Florida; she got me. She could relate to what I was telling her, or she would listen with a really close ear to make sure she was getting exactly what I was telling her about the emotions, the events. Everything was right on.
I‘m happy you said that, because one of the things I like most about this movie is that it’s more than a boxing movie. It’s about sexual identity and repression and survival and domestic abuse and all these different things. It’s so much more, and it’s a movie that’s gonna help some people when they watch it.
100%. That’s my goal, and from the beginning I said, ‘ This movie has to be promoted as a life movie, not as a sports movie. ‘ I think that there are so many different groups of people that this movie can give strength and hope to and then help that they know that people are out there to support them, whether it be with domestic violence, sexuality, or I refer to myself as the ultimate underdog. There’s nothing special about this coal miner’s daughter from a very small town in southern West Virginia. So if I can do it, if I can get up off the floor, if I can make it to the top of the boxing world that no other woman has ever done before, they can also do whatever their dream is.
About boxing for a minute now… this is the second year in a row I’ve seen a major movie that was about a female boxer. Last year, we had The Fire Inside, which was about Claressa Shields. What does it mean to you that we’re starting to get more sports movies about female athletes, specifically female boxers?
I really don’t want this to be looked at as a sports movie, but because boxing obviously is a backdrop, I think that it makes a big statement that bringing women’s boxing to the forefront will also get people’s attention so that these fighters who are fighting now will remember “Hey, Christie Martin had a lot to do with why we have some of the paydays. We’re getting some of the exposures we had here, 25, 30 years later. Somebody else put in a lot of work to make this possible for us today.”
What kind of conversations or advice did you give to Sydney Sweeney to help her performance? She’s also outstanding.
She did a great job. What’s interesting that maybe a lot of people don’t know is that she actually has an MMA background from when she was a teenager. So she already has that competitive spirit. The boxing, she enjoyed. I actually feel like she had fun with this role because it’s so out of character for her that it was challenging, but yet fun for her to be something that wasn’t the norm.
She was definitely having fun and getting into some of those trash-talking scenes. I thought that was funny.
Absolutely. That’s what made me laugh when I would be watching on set. Sometimes it would make me laugh, and sometimes it’d be like “Oh my goodness, did I really do that or say that?” But it was a lot of fun, and I agree with you.
There’s also a sweet moment in here when Christy is on the phone with her friend, excited that she found her thing in boxing. Have you ever given much thought to what career path you would have ended up on if you had never found boxing?
My degree is in education. And I would have probably been back in West Virginia teaching. My life was definitely not in that nine-to-five, eight-to-four, you know, nothing normal, whatever normal is. My life hasn’t been normal.
What gave you the courage to dive into motivational speaking and to do more with your story, becoming a full-on activist for domestic violence?
From my hospital bed, I made a deal with God, “If you’ll let me live, I’m gonna help one person before I die, not go down the same path that I went down.” Then, as I always say, the arrogance kicked in, and I said, “No, helping one person isn’t good enough. I want to help one person every day for the rest of my life. I want to make a difference.” I want to make a difference in the case of domestic violence. I want to make a difference so that parents can understand their children, whether it be that they’re gay, whatever it might be that’s different from what the parent thinks it should be, or maybe what is their norm. I believe sharing my life will help open other people’s eyes.
With this movie out in the world. I think you will help multiple people every day.
I hope so. That’s my goal.
Escaping any sort of situation involving domestic abuse is obviously hard, and there’s always that feeling of being trapped. Do you have any advice for someone who is in danger but feels like escaping is impossible?
They have to know that it is not impossible to escape. And they have to also realize that you have to go today. You can’t wait until tomorrow, because tomorrow might be the day that your abuser decides to end your life, to go to that extreme that you can’t recover from. So don’t stay one day too long. There are so many people out there who want to help you, and so many who can help you. So please don’t stay.
On a lighter topic, I also noticed you brought your dog to the screening last night. There are a few scenes in here where Christy is playing with her dog. So, can you talk about your love for animals, and did you push for those scenes to be in the movie?
So, the dog that’s in the movie, his name was Casey, and, um, it was around 23 years between the two dogs. My wife Lisa and the doctors, especially my wife Lisa, basically pushed for me to get a dog to help me day to day and be there for me. So Champ is the dog I have now, and he is my service dog. He brings me so much happiness, and I thank God every day for him. And I thank Lisa for pushing me to get Champ. Some people don’t like dogs. There’s something wrong with them. If my dog doesn’t like you, barks at you, or growls at you, there is an issue with you.
Do you encourage Champ also to help one person a day, just like you do?
This little dog, when we go through the airports or wherever we go, even last night, but when we roll through the airports, people are smiling, and they wanna touch him. That’s what it’s about, making people smile.
I don’t want to get too personal, but I have to admit, I wanted to cheer during the scene in the hospital where your brother stands up for you and basically says to your mother, “What the fuck?” at her behavior. Is your brother always someone you felt was by your side and would have accepted you when others wouldn’t in your family?
My brother passed in 2020 from the same cancer that my mother died from this year. He was 100% accepting. He loved Lisa, and he was my biggest fan. I wish he could be here to see this movie.
I do too. Part of Jim’s control was insisting that the world would not accept you if your true sexual identity came out. I read that you now feel more loved than ever. Are you hopeful that this film’s existence will encourage others struggling to come out or embrace their identities to do so, and to see that there’s a lot of love amid the unfortunate bigotry in this world?
Absolutely. I hope that watching this movie will give people the strength to come out as their true selves, be honest with their friends, and feel comfortable in their own skin. There’s nothing more satisfying and gratifying than just being who you are. Jim did have me convinced that the entire boxing world would turn against me, which, maybe in the nineties, the boxing world would have. But in 2010, after being shot, I had a huge outpour of support and love from the boxing world.
Of all your professional accomplishments, which is the one you hold most dear?
Wow, that’s a tough one because I have so many cool things that happened in my boxing career. I got to fight in Madison Square Garden. I’ve been inducted into seven boxing halls of fame, including the International Boxing Hall of Fame, which just began admitting women. Don King promoted me. My boxing career opened up a whole other world for me than teaching in Southern West Virginia would have.
Thank you so much for your time. The movie is great. I hope it is successful.
Thank you.
SEE ALSO: Read our Christy review here
Many thanks to Christy Martin for taking the time for this interview.
Robert Kojder
